“And boiled legs of mutton, eh?”
“Yes, with caper-sauce.”
“Capital. And what do you say to plum-pudding?”
“I fear there will not be time to stone the raisins; but I’ll telephone into the town at once and see.”
While she was gone I surveyed the dining-room once more. “If you moved the stove, and placed forms against the walls, instead of chairs, how would that be?” I asked.
It was a great problem, this. My colored ally and his two assistants set to measuring with a foot-rule. They had their woolly heads together when I looked in upon them an hour later.
“Yes, I believe it can be done,” said the chief waiter; and before midnight the tables were arranged, the stove cleared out, and the room almost ready for the feasters. As he was leaving for the night he said, “The people of my race honor Mr. Irving. He knew our great actor, Ira Aldridge. There was a letter from Mr. Irving about him, and a Dramatic Club started by our folk in the New York papers. Rely on me, sir, to have this dinner a success.”[50]
III.
Wednesday morning was ushered in with a blizzard from the north-west. The roads that had been slushy the day before were hard as adamant. There was ice in the wind. The air was keen as a knife. A traveller who had come in from Manitoba said that during the night it was “as much as your life was worth to pass from one car to another.” Towards noon the weather moderated. The sun came out, the wind changed, the spray from the falls fell into the river. A rainbow stretched its luminous arch over the American falls.