He perused the letter again. As he had observed, its general tenor certainly did suggest that the relations between Samuel and Sylvester lacked harmony, and that that was a very mild putting of the case. Samuel's terse phrases left the situation in no doubt whatever.
"I don't like to say it to you, Stephen," the letter ran in one portion, "but Sylvester has acted not only unfairly, but contemptibly. I could have forgiven him the act itself, but the manner of the act—never. It was done too deliberately, too designedly, to be overlooked. I shall not overlook it. I shall——" etc.
In short, the letter had not been pleasant reading. The white-haired brother who read it, lying back among his invalid's pillows, with a wry little twist of pain about his gentle lips as his eyes laboriously followed Samuel's vigorous scrawls and equally vigorous language, felt it to be a matter in which it was time to interfere. Men and brothers of the age of Samuel and Sylvester—neither would see forty-five years again—should not be allowed to feel in this way toward each other if their elder brother could help it.
"He 'doesn't like to say it,'" commented Stephen Kingsley with mild irony, "yet he seems to say it with considerable relish, nevertheless. The question is—what can I do?"
He closed his eyes and lay thinking. After a little he put out his hand and touched an electric bell. Its distant summons presently brought into the room the tall and commanding figure of a woman with iron-gray hair and a capable face. Mrs. Griggs had been Mr. Stephen Kingsley's housekeeper for thirty years; there could be no person more fitting for an elderly bachelor to consult.
Mr. Kingsley opened his eyes and regarded Mrs. Griggs with an air of deliberation. His plans were made. He announced them. As one looked at Mrs. Griggs one would hardly have expected an employer so helpless as he to issue orders to a subject so powerful as she, in so firm a manner. Yet he gave the impression of consulting her, after all.
"Mrs. Griggs," said he, "I am thinking of having a Christmas house-party. Merely the family, you know. Yet that means a considerable number, including—er—all the babies. Should you think we could accommodate them?"
Mrs. Griggs's somewhat stern expression of face grew incredulous. Having served Mr. Kingsley so long, under conditions so peculiar, she was accustomed to take—and was allowed—liberties of speech which would have been sternly forbidden any other person outside the circle of kinship.
"The family!" said she. "You—they—why, there won't more'n half of them come. Your brother Sylvester and your brother Samuel——"
"I understand about Sylvester and Samuel. That is why I want a Christmas house-party."