"'CHOPS,' SEZEE, 'YOU NEEDS MORE SALT!' SEZEE. 'GO BACK TO THE GRIDIRON,' SEZEE."
"Yezzur, hexackly, zur, I see, zur. Dinner is served, zur, but Mr. Torbert be not come. Shall I tell Miss Emily?"
"Yes, to be sure. How absurd of Torbert! Why, it's quite late. When I go into the parlor, which will be in another minute, Wobbles you may announce dinner."
Wobbles bowed himself away and Mr. Maddledock sat himself down. He picked up the note to which he had just referred, and read it through carefully. Then he rubbed his eyeglass, stroked his nose reflectively, crumpled the note in his hand, and tossed it into the grate fire before him. He rose and stood watching it burn. "Only two things are possible," he said, quietly. "I must shoot him or pay him, and I don't feel entirely certain which I'd better do." Then he walked into the parlor.
"You're almost as bad as Mr. Torbert, father," said Miss Maddledock. "I've been waiting long enough for you, and now we'll all go to dinner."
"Torbert's late, is he?" said Mr. Maddledock, as if this were the first he had heard of it, bowing gravely to the others. "How's that, Linden?"
"I'm sure I can't account for it at all, sir," answered the young man. "We took breakfast together, and at that hour he was in full possession of his faculties. His watch was doing its accustomed duty, and there was no sign of any such condition in or about him as would suggest the possibility of preposterous behavior like this."
"Perhaps his business keeps him," said Miss Maddledock amiably.
"Ho, ho," chuckled Mrs. Throcton, in her jolly way, "if he depended on that to keep him, he'd be ill kept, indeed."
"Why, mamma," said Miss Throcton, reprovingly, "how can you?"