“I think I understand everything,” said Helen gazing musingly at the engagement ring of which she had been the happy possessor for just twenty-four hours, “except how Mr. Campbell began sending those important people to you and father. You might almost think it was a joke of some kind.”
“The joke certainly isn’t on us! I’ve decided to turn down the nomination for prosecutor. As things are going I’d be a fool to sacrifice my private practice for a public job. The general counsel of the Transcontinental’s feeling us out as to whether we’ll take the local attorneyship of that rascally corporation. Canby Taylor’s had it for twenty years, and it would be some triumph to add it to our string of scalps.”
The invitation list, rigidly revised and cut to one hundred, was finally acceptable to all the members of the family, and Helen and John had begun to address the envelopes when this task was interrupted by the delivery of a telegram.
“It’s for you, mother,” said Helen, taking the envelope from the capped and aproned housemaid who had been installed in the household against the coming of the Campbells.
Mrs. Ward adjusted her glasses and settled herself to read with the resigned air of one inured to the idea that telegrams are solely a medium for communicating bad news.
“What is it, mother? Somebody dead?” asked John without looking up from the envelope he was addressing to The Hon. and Mrs. Addison Swiggert.
“Worse!” murmured Mrs. Ward, staring vacantly.
“Nothing can be worse!” ejaculated Helen, catching the bit of paper as it fell fluttering to the floor. “The Campbells are not coming!” she gasped.
“Not coming!” faltered Robert Fleming Ward, throwing down a brief he was studying.
“Read it, for heaven’s sake!” commanded John.