It was Aunt Augusta who thought up the insulting and incendiary plan of having the rally as an offering of hospitality from the League, and I hope if Uncle Peter is going to die over it he will not have the final explosion in my presence.
Privately I spent a dollar and a half sending a night-letter to Richard all about it and asking him if the Commissioners would be willing to stand for this feminist plank in the barbecue deal. He had sent me the nicest letter of acceptance from the Board when I had written the invitation to them through him, as coming from the perfectly ladylike feminine population of Glendale, and I didn't like to get them into a woman-whirlwind without their own consent. I paid the boy at the telegraph office five dollars not to talk about the matter to a human soul, and threatened to have him dismissed if he did, so the bomb-shell was kept in until this afternoon.
Richard replied to the telegram with characteristic directness:
Delighted to be in at the fight. Seven of us rabid suffragists, two on the fence, and a half roast pig will convert the other. Found no answer to my question in letter of last Tuesday. Must!
RICHARD.
It was nice of Jane to write out and get ready her bomb-shell and then go off with Polk, so as not to see it explode. But I'm glad she did. However, I did advise her to take a copy of it along with the reels and the lunch-basket to read to him, as a starter of their day to be devoted to the establishment of a perfect friendship between them.
Polk didn't look at me even once as I helped pack them and their traps into his Hupp, but Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like Polk in his white flannels, and he and Jane made a picture of perfectly blended tailored smartness as they got ready for the break-away.
There are some men that acquire feminine obligations as rough cheviot does lint and Henrietta is one of Polk's when it comes to the fishing days. He takes her so often that she thinks she owns him and all the trout in Little Harpeth, and she landed in the midst of the picnic with her fighting clothes on.
"Where are you and her going at,—fishing?" she asked in a calmly controlled voice that both of them had heard before, and which made us quail in our boots and metaphorically duck our heads.
"Yes, we—er thought we would," he answered with an uncertainty of voice and manner that bespoke abject fear.