We moved to Idle Island in September. And we were so delighted with what the architects, and landscape-gardeners, and mosquito doctors had done to make it habitable; with the house itself, and the grape-house, and greenhouses, and gardens, and pergolas, and marble columns from Athens, and terraces, and in-and-out door tennis-courts, and swimming-pools, and boat-houses, and golf links, and all the other country-place necessities, and particularly with a line of the most comfortable lounging-chairs and divans in the world, that we decided to spend the winter there. Sally telephoned to my father's secretary and asked him to spend the winter with us, and make out lists for week-end parties, and to be generally civil and useful. The secretary said that he would be delighted to come if he could persuade my father and mother to go abroad for the winter; and later he called Sally up, and said that he had persuaded them.
Well, from the first our week-end parties were failures. On the first Friday in October the President of the United States said that he hated cheats and liars (only he mentioned names) and the stock-market went to smash. Saturday it was still in a messy state, and the people who came out Saturday afternoon couldn't or wouldn't talk about anything else. They came by the 4:30 to Stepping-Stone, and were ferried over to the island in the motor boat. Sally and I rode down to the pier in the jinrikishas that my father's secretary had had imported for us for a wedding present; and, I give you my word, the motor-boat as it slowed into the pier looked like an excursion steamer out to view the beauties of the Hudson. Everybody on board was hidden behind a newspaper.
"Fong," said Sally to her jinrikisha man, "take me back to the house."
He turned and trotted off with her, and they disappeared under the elms.
"Just because your guests aren't interested in you," I called after her, "is no reason why you shouldn't be interested in them."
But she didn't answer, and I was afraid I'd hurt her feelings; so I said to my man, or horse, or horse-man—it's hard to know what to call them:
"Long Lee, you go back to the house, clip-step."
Clip-step soon overtook Sally, and I asked her what she was mad about.
"I'm mad," she said, "because none of those people have ever seen this beautiful island before, and they wouldn't look up from their dirty old newspapers. What's the matter with them?"
"They're worried about the market," said I, "and each one wants the others to think that he's more worried than they are. That's all."