“Such assurance!” said both satellites internally. But they only murmured, “Splendid!” “Just like you, Annetta,” and the like.
“Of course, you and dear Mr. Grindstone will be included in my dinner list,” went on Mrs. Stratton, addressing her now speechless treasurer. “And you, Cornelia, will pair with old Major Gooch. Sixteen I can seat easily, all choice spirits, and the rest of the club will have to be satisfied with an introduction to Bludgeon over a cup of tea at five o’clock. Mr. Bludgeon will, I fancy, see that Sutphen is not so far behind New York in her style of doing things.”
“And what will the lecture be about?” ventured Cornelia, more than anything else to cover her own pique.
“Oh, that is of no consequence! Readings from his own works, possibly. But the name of Bludgeon is enough. It will exhaust a good deal of the reserve fund of the club to pay him his price, but I felt sure we could make that all right, Mrs. Grindstone. That I had decided it is best would, of course, be sufficient for the club.”
And the treasurer was to have no voice in this, her own especial branch of service! No wonder Mrs. Grindstone’s spirit rose! Old Mrs. Bennett, breaking in upon the conversation to read aloud an obituary notice striking her fancy, effected a happy diversion.
From that date Mrs. Stratton, absorbed in her own ambitious plans for a feast to the English author that should be described in the local prints, and perchance quoted in metropolitan news columns, saw but little of her two friends. It was observed by some lookers-on that Cornelia Bennett was seen moving about the streets with animation, paying frequent visits to the new caterer, Simonson, and preserving withal an air of pleasing mystery. Other people saw good Mrs. Grindstone going hither and thither in much the same way. And putting two and two together, Sutphen decided that there was to be at least a “chicken salad and oyster spread” in store for the members of the Literary Club, following the appearance on their platform of the great man, Timothy Bludgeon. The unliterary portion of Sutphen licked its chops at the suggestion!
But a week before the appointed time, out came a genuine surprise. Two sets of cards were issued simultaneously. One from Mrs. and Miss Bennett, inviting their friends to meet Mr. Bludgeon at luncheon on the fifteenth; the other stating that Mr. and Mrs. Grindstone would be “At Home” on the evening of the same day, at half-past ten o’clock, with the additional words, “To meet Mr. Bludgeon” inscribed across the tops!
Where now was the wind to fill Mrs. Stratton’s sails? In vain might she whistle for it, when her lion was due to roar at two banquets besides her own in the self-same day. And worse than all, Cornelia Bennett, in undertaking to give this ridiculous luncheon of hers, would actually take precedence in point of time of Mrs. Chauncey Stratton! Of course the affair would be a sad failure. Cornelia knew little, her mother less, of the customs of entertaining in modern society. Theirs would be homely doings. Turkey with cranberry sauce, for example; jellies in tall glasses set around a china compotier of floating island; cakes, big and little. No lobster farcie, no mushroom on toast, French chops, birds, tongue in aspic, salads, ices—such as Mrs. Stratton would have ordered. Mrs. Grindstone’s festivity would be—equally, of course—on the same old-fashioned lines. Oyster stews and molds of ice-cream, the predominating element of the table. A smell of fried oysters enveloping all. Oh! Annetta well knew the sort of thing to expect. She pitied poor Mr. Bludgeon for falling into the hands of these stupid, pushing women, who were not satisfied to sit still and see her take the field of Sutphen’s hospitality to distinguished strangers. One thought occurred to her, to fill Annetta’s soul with consolation! The weak spot in Sutphen’s domestic panoply, as known to all Sutphen’s housekeepers, was the general prevalence of plain white or old willow-pattern china on the shelves. Most of Sutphen’s lords and masters preferred these varieties of porcelain, and had set their feet down upon any suggestion of change. Strange to say, even the amenable Mr. Chauncey Stratton had once asserted himself so far as to declare he preferred to eat his meals from the dishes he had been accustomed to ever since his wife and he had set up housekeeping. This was the crumpled roseleaf in Mrs. Chauncey Stratton’s couch of down. That her set of white porcelain rejoiced in gilded edges, while those of other people were plain, gave her but limited satisfaction. For two years she had been bending every energy of her mind toward securing a set of Royal Meissen—“onion pattern”—that she had seen in a famous shop in New York. For two years Mr. Chauncey Stratton had resisted her. His attitude was to be accounted for only by the saying of old Mrs. Bennett, “The very best and most biddable of husbands has his obstinate spot, my dear; and when a woman runs afoul of it, she might as well give up.”
Of late, coincidently with the threatened dinner to Mr. Timothy Bludgeon, Mrs. Stratton had seen a ray of light pierce the darkness surrounding this question of china for the table. In investigating the resources of Simonson, the New York restaurateur, her eyes had sparkled at the discovery in the rear of his premises of an entire service of “onion pattern” Meissen—or at least a good imitation of that desired original.
What an opportunity was here to deck out her board with an “effect” in porcelain of the latter-day style she aspired to introduce into Sutphen.