But mother was in no mood for banter.
"Don't you talk to me about the devil, Dan Fielding!" she said, facing him squarely, and reluctantly unfolding her daintiest linen handkerchief to wipe the little beads of perspiration from across her upper lip. "I've had enough to make me believe in him this day, with three politicians coming, and a thunder-storm, and a broken ice-factory, and rheumatism and gall-stones!"
"Well, you know you were the one who suggested inviting them here," father defended himself, Adam-like.
"Well, maybe I was, but I should never have dreamed of such a thing if you hadn't said, with that woebegone look of yours that you wished you could see them and hear them talk about the latest phases of the situation! Then, just to please you, I suggested that it was too bad to let them go to that dreadful hotel for dinner, when it would be no trouble for Mammy Lou to prepare one of her delightful meals!"
"Of course, neither one of us could know beforehand how deucedly contrary everything was going to turn out to-day, else I should have told you not to invite them"—father was reiterating in what he intended for a soothing tone, when all of a sudden I heard the tramp of feet upon the front porch, for my ears all the time had been straining in that direction, else I should never have heard them, far away as the kitchen is, and with that hideous noise.
"Hush!" I implored, as the footfalls grew quite distinct and I pulled down my cuffs, settled my belt, fluffed my hair out a little more at the sides, and flicked a tiny feather off the toe of my shoe. "They've come!"
"And Ann in a shirt-waist suit," mother sent after father as a final shot when he started toward the front part of the house, "and that bovine orchestra!"
She hurried into her bedroom and made a motion with her powder-puff before she followed father, while I stopped in the dining-room and gave a glance of satisfaction at the shaded lights, the old-fashioned good taste of the furnishings, and the quantities of roses. The table was perfect, and I knew mammy too well to doubt that the dinner, too, would be everything that palate or eye could desire; then I glanced into the great old gold-framed mirror hung above the mantelpiece.
"I believe he'll enjoy his dinner," I decided, nodding in a friendly fashion toward the reflection in the glass; and, hearing the voices still coming from the direction of the porch, I hurried on out there.
They had come! In truth they had come, but alas it was not Richard Chalmers and satellites! It was Miss Delia Badger, Mrs. Sullivan and Neva, drenched and bewildered, that Bob Hall, the fool, had brought from Bayville!