“Why no, that is the reason I can’t divine why he is bringing him up here. I believe Zebedee likes him well enough—at least I never heard him say anything to the contrary. There is no harm in the dude that I ever heard of. Of course he is the Lord High Muck-a-Muck with the buds. He decides which ones are to ornament society and which ones to be picked for funerals. He has already looked over Dum and me at a hop last Thanksgiving at the Jefferson; Page, too. I believe he thinks we’ll do, at least he danced us around and wrote on our back with invisible chalk: ‘Passed by the Censor of Society.’ I believe he thinks a lot of Zebedee, but then everyone does who has even a glimmering of sense,” and Dee reread her father’s letter, a joint one for her and her sister, with a postscript for Page.
“Well, all he says is that he is coming and going to bring the immaculate Hi and we must behave,” declared Dum, reading over Dee’s shoulder. “I don’t know whether I am going to behave or not. That Mr. Parker gets on my nerves. He’s too clean, somehow. I’m mighty afraid I’m going to roll him down the mountain.”
“Mis’ Carter is fixin’ up a lot for the gent,” said Susan, who had been busily engaged with her wash tub while the girls were talking, “if it’s Mr. Hiram G. Parker you is a-speakin’ of. She done say he is a very high-up pusson. I do believe it was all on account of him that she done made Miss Douglas look after her hide so keerful this week.”
“Why, does mother know he is coming up?” asked Helen. “She never told me. Nan, did you know he was coming?”
Nan hadn’t known, but she had a great light break on her mind when she heard that her mother knew he was to come: Mr. Tucker had certainly used this visit of Mr. Parker’s to persuade her mother to give up the trip to White Sulphur.
“No! I never heard a word of it,” Nan answered sedately but her eyes were dancing and it was with difficulty that she restrained a giggle.
How could her mother be so easily influenced? She must consider Mr. Parker very well worth while to stay at camp just to see him. That was the reason for all of this extra washing and ironing Susan had on hand. Nan loved her mother devotedly but she had begun to feel that perhaps she was a very—well, to say the least—a very frivolous lady. Nan’s judgment was in a measure more mature than Helen’s although Helen was almost two years her senior. Where Helen loved, she loved without any thought of the loved one’s having any fault. She wondered now that her mother should have known of Mr. Parker’s coming without mentioning it, but as for that little lady’s dressing up to see this society man, why, that was just as it should be. She had absolutely no inkling of her mother’s maneuvering to push Douglas toward a successful debut. Susan’s intimation that Douglas was to preserve her complexion for Mr. Parker’s benefit was simply nonsense. Susan was after all a very foolish colored girl who had gotten things mixed. Douglas was to protect her delicate blond skin for all society, not for any particular member of it.
The train arrived bearing many week-enders and among them Zebedee and the precious Mr. Hiram G. Parker, looking his very fittest in a pearl gray suit with mauve tie and socks and a Panama hat that had but recently left the block. Zebedee could not help smiling at the fine wardrobe trunk that his companion had brought and comparing it with his own small grip with its changes of linen packed in the bottom and the boxes of candy for Tweedles and Page squeezed on top.
“Thank Heaven, I don’t have a reputation to keep up!” he said to himself.
The wardrobe trunk was not very large, not much more bulky than a suitcase but it had to be carried up the mountain by Josephus and its owner seemed to be very solicitous that it should be stood on the proper end.