“Where’s Saint Peter?” demanded the ambassador, halting his blue squad.
With that the senator wailed suddenly as they stood, eleven strong, in College Street: “Oh, little old Saint Peter—hurry up.”
As if in answer, a mountainous touring-car swept around the corner of Chapel Street. Behind the wheel was a small man of fifty-odd, in a blue blouse, in a mechanic’s cap, blue-crowned, visored. At his side a dried-up, tiny countrywoman, in an apologetic black hat, sat stiffly. A purple ribbon was around the hat, and dusty, artificial violets on its brim. A clean, brown calico dress went with it, and a worn and patient but spirited old face. Under the queer hat one saw gray hair strained back and screwed in a knot; life had few frills for this farmer’s wife. A large basket of eggs was held in her lap. Peter Price drew up at the curb.
“Mrs. Ryder,” said Saint Peter, with great courtesy, “let me present Judge Whalen and Mr. Cutting and Dr. Allen and Mr. Pendleton; and Mr. Ellsworth and Judge Arbuthnot; and Mr. Secretary Loomis, and—see here, fellows, that tonneau holds five, not fifty—and Senator Butler and Mr. Garden and Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Digby.”
The blue-bloused regiment closed, bare-headed, around the little old woman.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Mrs. Ryder happily, as she bowed at each name. And one felt that she was pleased to meet one. Mrs. Ryder would have been, with a chance, a famous hostess. “Are you young men comin’ back for your fust meetin’?” she snapped out, quite in the spirit of the game, in her quaint, sharp, old New England voice.
And the “young men” roared at her unexpected little joke. Not at all shy was Mrs. Ryder, but enchanted with the situation. To the ambassador, inquiring, she explained how old Whitey and the buggy had broke down as they come along with her eggs, and how Saint Peter had rescued her with his chariot of fire. Saint Peter looked sheepish. Would they guy him, or wouldn’t they?
“Better climb out now,” he threw back to the mass-meeting in the tonneau. “Mrs. Ryder and I must get to market with our eggs.”
“They’re perfectly beautiful eggs,” reflected Jimmy Pendleton. “I need some eggs. What’ll you sell them for, Mrs. Ryder?”
“Let me in!”