Chapter VII
Country Side
FOR instances, now, take this here Saturday last past. Down home Mr. Dallas would a-been down to that there oil-office of his bright and early shaking hands with the paying customers and helping boss the clerks whilst they drawed off the oil, and all. But nothing like that don't happen here with us—no sir, not none whatsomever. He lays in bed until it's going on pretty near ten o'clock and then he gets up and I packs him, and along about dinner-time, which they calls it lunch-time round this town, we puts out in the car to the country for a week-end. Only, for the amount of baggage we totes with us you'd a-thought it was going to be a month-end. I'm tooken along to look after his clothes and to do general valetting for him.
We takes Mr. Raynor and Mr. Bellows and the permanent-wavy lady, Mrs. Gaylord, along with us. Miss DeWitt and Miss O'Brien is also headed for the same place we is, but they comes in the blue runabout traveling close behind us. By now, I has done learned not to expect Mrs. Gaylord to bring a husband with her. It seems like she can get 'em, but she can't keep 'em. She's been married three times in all; but from what I can hear, her first husband hauled off and died on her and the second one kind of strayed off and never come back. I ain't heard 'em say what happened to the present incumbent but since he ain't never been produced, I judge he must've got mislaid someway, so now she's practically all out of husbands again. Still, she seems to be bearing up very serene at all times. If she misses 'em she don't let on.
Well, we loads up the car with the white folks, and with valises and golf-sacks and one thing and another and starts for the country. But I must say for it that it's totally unsimilar to any country like what I has been used to heretofore. The front yards which we passes all looks like the owners must take 'em in at nights and in the mornings brush 'em off good and put 'em back outdoors again; and most of the residences is a suitable size to make good high-school buildings or else feeble-mind institutes, and even the woodlots has a slicked-up appearance like as if they'd just come back that same day from the dry-cleaner's. In more'n an hour's steady travel I don't see a single rail fence nor a regulation weed-patch nor a lye kettle nor an ash-hopper nor a corn-crib nor a martin-box nor a hound-dog nor a smoke-house nor scarcely anything which would signify it to be sure-enough country. I thinks to myself that if a cotton-tail rabbit was aiming to camp out here he'd naturally be obliged to pack his bedding along with him.
When we arrives where we is headed for I is still further surprised because, beforehand, Mr. Dallas tells me we is going to stop at a country-place, but it looks to me more like a city-hall which has done strayed far off from its functions and took root in a big clump of trees alongside the river. Why, it's got more rooms in it than our new county infirmary's got and grounds around it all beautiful like a cemetery. It belongs to a very spry-acting lady named Mrs. Banister, which she is a friend of Mrs. Gaylord's. There's a Mr. Banister, too, but as far as I can judge, the lady is the sole proprietor and his job is just being Mrs. Banister's Mr. and helping with the drinks when the butler is busy doing something else. I hears the cook saying out in the kitchen that he can also mix a very tasty salad-dressing. Well, that's what he looks like to me, just a natural-born salad-dressing mixer.
But we don't arrive there until it's getting towards four o'clock by reason of us stopping for quite a sojourn at a tea-house along the road. Leastwise, they calls it a tea-house, but its principalest functions, so far as I can note, is to provide accommodations for folks to dance and to drink up the refreshments which they've fetched along with 'em in pocket flasks; and you might call that tea if you prefers to, but it's the kind of tea which now sells by the case for cash down and is delivered at your house after dark.
That's mainly what our outfit does there—dance and refresh themselves with what the gentlemen brought along on their hips. From where I'm setting in the car outside I can see 'em weaving in and out amongst the tables whilst a string-band plays jazzing tunes for 'em to dance by. But Mr. Dallas don't appear to be getting the hang of it so very well and the chauffeur, who's setting there with me, he allows probably the boss ain't caught on to these here new dances yet.
I says to him, I says: