“Mamma’s here. The auto is coming for her in half an hour. She came to dinner, but there’s no dinner.”
“I’ve something to tell you,” said Hartley. “I thought to break it to you gently, but since your mother is here we may as well out with it.”
He stooped and whispered something at her ear.
His wife screamed. Her mother came running into the hall. The dark-haired woman screamed again—the joyful scream of a well-beloved and petted woman.
“Oh, mamma!” she cried ecstatically, “what do you think? Vivienne is coming to cook for us! She is the one that stayed with the Montgomerys a whole year. And now, Billy, dear,” she concluded, “you must go right down into the kitchen and discharge Héloise. She has been drunk again the whole day long.”
VII
SOCIOLOGY IN SERGE AND STRAW
The season of irresponsibility is at hand. Come, let us twine round our brows wreaths of poison ivy (that is for idiocy), and wander hand in hand with sociology in the summer fields.
Likely as not the world is flat. The wise men have tried to prove that it is round, with indifferent success. They pointed out to us a ship going to sea, and bade us observe that, at length, the convexity of the earth hid from our view all but the vessel’s topmast. But we picked up a telescope and looked, and saw the decks and hull again. Then the wise men said: “Oh, pshaw! anyhow, the variation of the intersection of the equator and the ecliptic proves it.” We could not see this through our telescope, so we remained silent. But it stands to reason that, if the world were round, the queues of Chinamen would stand straight up from their heads instead of hanging down their backs, as travellers assure us they do.
Another hot-weather corroboration of the flat theory is the fact that all of life, as we know it, moves in little, unavailing circles. More justly than to anything else, it can be likened to the game of baseball. Crack! we hit the ball, and away we go. If we earn a run (in life we call it success) we get back to the home plate and sit upon a bench. If we are thrown out, we walk back to the home plate—and sit upon a bench.
The circumnavigators of the alleged globe may have sailed the rim of a watery circle back to the same port again. The truly great return at the high tide of their attainments to the simplicity of a child. The billionaire sits down at his mahogany to his bowl of bread and milk. When you reach the end of your career, just take down the sign “Goal” and look at the other side of it. You will find “Beginning Point” there. It has been reversed while you were going around the track.