Papa rose to the occasion as he did at those times when he abruptly became the decisive head of his house. One marveled and wondered about it afterward that he should not be this head always! He brought the guests in, explaining to them something of the eccentricities of their host, Uncle Bruce, presented them to Mamma, and accompanied by her, took them upstairs to make themselves a little more comfortable after their journey, for dinner.
Leaving them thus employed, he came down, got in the hack with Uncle Taliaferro and the luggage above, and the man-servant within, and drove around to the alley where according to Aunt Viney, Hester, the servant of the Bruce household, lived. Found her, put her up on the box by Uncle Taliaferro, took her to the house, and leaving her and the man-servant there to make the guests' rooms ready, as well as leaving the luggage of the guests, arrived at home again in time to meet the descending gentlemen and take them in to the re-served dinner.
This from Papa! There were reserves and capabilities then in him, too, unused and unsuspected, as in Auntie! Who or what had failed to draw them out?
The delay had given Auntie and Selina opportunity to open some ginger preserves, and search out some cake that was not too stale, from the cake-box. It gave Selina time to speak her scandalized mind, too. She was horrified!
"And they'll sleep there! In that house!" she managed to say to Mamma. She meant the Bruce house, big, three-storied, of stucco, with iron verandas upstairs and down, well enough outside, though needing painting. But inside——!
"Certainly, we've nothing to do with that," said Mamma sensibly. "It would have been no more in order if Juanita had been here and they had been expected, you know that. They and your Uncle Bruce will eat here. We'll do our part.
"Warn them about the books on the stairs and the landing, Lavinia," reminded Auntie.
She referred to Marcus' new Encyclopedia. When the twenty-five volumes of it came home, there did not seem any place for them in the house already overflowing with books, and Aunt Juanita piled them along the stairs until a place for their disposal could be discussed, and nobody ever had moved them.
Once more Aunt Viney in her best apron now, and a fresh and snowy headkerchief, brought dinner in and put it on the table.
The Honorable Verily Blanke, across the table from Selina, was a delightful, elderly personage with grizzled hair, and a well-kept grizzled beard, whose head as if by its splendid weight, was sunk forward between great shoulders. His eyes were blue and keen and kindly, and he kept looking across with a wonderful gleam and smile in them as if he found something there worth the looking at, in Selina, whose cheeks with the wonderful exigency of it all, were their finest coral, and whose pretty concern, nicely held in, was in itself a tribute. Perhaps his eyes wandered in kindly fashion to Auntie, too, comely and restful in her black velvet gown.