"I must hurry!" I plead. "You've really no idea what an interesting occasion a Flag Day celebration is, Captain Macauley!"
"No?" he smiled, understanding my sudden determination to leave.
"Indeed, no! Why, for three hundred and sixty-four days in the year you may have a gentle Platonic affection for General Washington, Paul Revere and the rest, but on the other day—Flag Day—your flame is rekindled into a burning zeal! You can't afford to be late! You must hurry!—Especially if you have to go there on the street-car!"
"It's a deuced pity you can't get up a zeal for a devoted living man," he called after me in a severe voice as I reached the door. "It's a pity you can't see the idiocy of this determination of yours—before that publishing company revokes its offer."
"Well, who knows?" I answered, waving him a gay good-by. "I hate street-cars above everything, and I'm sorry my coupé isn't waiting at the door right now!"
CHAPTER VI
FLAG DAY
Now, according to my ethics, there are two kinds of men who go to daylight parties—idiots and those that are dragged there by their wives.
I had scarcely crossed the lawn of Seven Oaks and found for myself a modest place beside the speaker's stand—which was garlanded with as many different kinds of flags as there were rats in Hamelin Town—when I observed that this present congregation held a fair sprinkling of each kind.
But these held my attention for only a moment—because of the house in the background, and the trees overhead. (To be candid, Mrs. Hiram Walker's country place is not exactly a soothing retreat to visit when temptation is barking at your heels like a little hungry dog—and the desire of your heart begins with H.)
"House that's a Home" might have been written on the sign-board of the car-station much more truthfully than "Seven Oaks"—for only the immense patriarchal ones were included in the "Seven" there being hordes of lesser ones which were no more mentioned than children are when they're getting big enough to be paying railroad fare. The grove was well cared for, but not made artificial, and even the luxuriousness of the house itself could not hurt the charm, for the Hiram Walkers were human beings before they were society column acrobats.