“Diccon will have to do without me,” Allen spoke up with sudden firmness. “I am a candidate, I suppose; but I refuse to campaign.”
Diccon had managed things with distressing brilliancy. Doubting members of the trustees had to be dined and talked into reason. And they had to be paid.
“Paid?” Kate and Gorgas asked together. Mrs. Levering had elected to keep out of the conversation; her instinctive interest was to pilot the boat, not to take part in the ship’s concert.
“Yes, paid,” nodded Blynn grimly. “Paid in blood.”
“Oh,” the girls gasped in relief. Blood was permitted; money, never.
“Yes,” he explained; “I had to entertain, tell sprightly stories, plunge into theories of education, and act all the while with sweeping smile and glittering eye—and voluble! as Tutivillus himself. And not just to one person or to one group of persons, mind you; but to every Tom, Dick and Harry whom Diccon sicked on me. If they had come in battalions I could have done it, but they came in single file. When Diccon finally started to use me, we had dinners every night and luncheons every day, except one day, when we had two luncheons. Diccon said there was no other way out of it.”
“I wouldn’t have done that for a peck of presidents,” said Gorgas firmly. “I’d have been myself.”
“Myself!” echoed Allen. “Bless my soul! Myself during that whole trip was a silent, sullen, nasty-tongued person. If I had ever let myself out of the box he would have first lambasted the whole crew and then sunk back into a silent scowl. You know how it is. Haven’t you done the same thing when you were the charming hostess?” Blynn appealed to them.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” everyone chorused, including Mrs. Levering.
“There are times,” Kate remembered, “when I am strongly tempted to have fake hysterics in the middle of the dinner, just to drive them home.”