I looked inquiring, innocent.
She disregarded this, as a person too much above a lie herself to recognize one.
"I think we shall need six traps, at least. Cook says she will not stay unless they go. She says one ran across her face last night!"
(Oh, the riotousness of them! More than I had suspected!)
At this moment the cook herself appeared, far less allegorical, comfortingly real, a lemon-squeezer in one hand.
"Oh, mum, I can't be saying exactly whether it did or not. Maybe it did, belike it didn't. But they do get me that nervous with what they might do!"
"You can see from this," antiphonied Miss Layng, solemnly.
She turned the Holland cheese toward me. In its side was eaten what could only be called a cavern. She stood there exhibiting it, eloquent, without need of words.
Meanwhile, my own mental processes were busy, delightedly. Of course! of course! Here was a revelation and an accounting! It was this, undoubtedly, that had been the occasion of so much merriment and wild celebration. And how altogether natural! For days they had been fearful, and oppressed with dark anxiety. What harm might not such a race as ourselves bring them! Other powers had fled before us. They had remained! But who dared tell the outcome? Dark prophecies! Sombre forebodings! Unthinkable possibilities! And then,—then,—when the dark-minded and old among them pointed out optimism as the sheerest folly,—then came this proof of unlooked-for benevolence! Age and pessimism received their due. Caution and timorousness were flung to the winds. Old wives and grandfathers were flouted, and their cautiousness set down to sheer envy and crabbedness. The day and the victory were in the hands of the young, the optimistic, the full of faith! Come, ladies; come gentlemen! Pay no heed to these pessimistic aged people. Preserve your faith in life! Here is good warrant! Quick! uncork the bottles! Bring the baskets along! This is a day for feasting, for feasting! Look upon this magenta miracle of benevolence, and be convinced. Life is kind!
Where is a man with heart and imagination so dead who would not understand, by the light of all this, why the night had seen such celebration? How well understood, now, was the daring of the gentlemen, the almost hysterical gayety of the ladies!