"Why do you think so?" Gay demanded.
"Because I've one mouth and two ears," Lyman responded promptly.
"And the majority rules, doesn't it, Lyman?" said May, quickly.
"Say something yourself, Gay," Will urged.
"Yes, do," said the young people, who thought this was their day and that the General's newly-found happiness and the mother's improved health were merely side issues.
"Yes, Gay; rise and shine," laughed May. "I never knew before just what that meant. It means to get up after a time like this and say something bright, doesn't it, father?"
"Yes, that's the philosophy of after-dinner remarks in a nutshell," Mr. Walcott replied.
"It is easy to rise!" said Gay, suiting the action to the word, "but it's not so easy to shine. It seems to me that after remarks ought to come before! A fellow would feel more like it, wouldn't he, May? (Nod from May.) You can't even get a dog to 'speak for it' worth a cent when he's had all the bones he wants. I mean that you're really fuller when you're empty—oh, dear! what I want to say I can't say; and what I say I don't want to say. But I hope everybody has had a rattling good time—(We have! we have! from the boys in chorus.) So have I," continued the speaker, "and I hope we shall soon repeat this—this—some kind of an occasion—I can't think of the word—bang-up time will do. We couldn't have had it anywhere else in such—such immense shape, and—somebody else must put a P. S. on and thank Uncle Harold and Miss Sarah. I'm tired of shining."
And Gay sat down amid shouts of laughter.
Then somebody proposed singing Auld Lang Syne. Not that anybody specially cared to sing it, but because Auld Lang Syne ends a good time most appropriately, as the benediction closes service.