"Do what?"
"Nothing. You're sure you won't forget?"
"I never forget," I said. I had got up the steps by this time and was trying to figure why the spring-house door had two knobs.
I hadn't any idea what he meant.
"Remember," he said, very slowly, "Thoburn is going to have his party to-night instead of to-morrow. Tell Pierce that. To-night, not to-morrow." I was pretty well ashamed when I got in the spring-house and sat down in the dark. I kept saying over and over to myself, so I'd not forget, "tonight, not to-morrow," but I couldn't remember WHAT was to be to-night. I was sleepy, too, and my legs were cold and numb. I remember going into the pantry for a steamer rug, and sitting down there for a minute, with the rug around my knees before I started to the house. And that is all I DO remember.
I was wakened by a terrible hammering in the top of my head. I reached out for the glass of water that I always put beside my bed at night and I touched a door-knob instead. Then I realized that the knocking wasn't all in my head. There was a sort of steady movement of feet on the other side of the door, with people talking and laughing. And above it all rose the steady knock—knock of somebody beating on tin.
"Can't do it." It was the bishop's voice. "I am convinced that nothing but dynamite will open this tin of lobster."
"Just a moment, Bishop," Mr. Thoburn's voice and the clink of bottles, "I have a can opener somewhere. You'll find the sauce a la Newburg—"
"Here, somebody, a glass, quick! A bottle's broken!"
"Did anybody remember to bring salt and pepper?"