Nimble Dick, who was rarely anything but good-natured, was surprised by the bewilderments of the situation into being almost as fierce as Dirk Colson was habitually; the gaping amazement of his boon companions seeming to add to his irritation.
“But you will,” said his teacher, cheerily. “It is an easy matter to explain; Miss Dennis knows all about such things; and I'm going to help, though they haven't honored me with an appointment.”
At a sign from the lady, Mr. Durant stepped back to his platform and announced:—
“The chairman of the Committee on Decoration desires me to say that his committee is called together to-morrow evening, at the Young Men's Social Parlors, No. 76 East Fifty-fifth Street, at six o'clock, sharp, as the chairman has another engagement at seven.”
“I had to coin a name for the place of meeting,” he said to Mrs. Roberts afterwards. “I beg your pardon if it was wrong; but Ried has been giving me glowing accounts of that room, and you said something about its being a social parlor, didn't you?”
“It is a good name,” said Mrs. Roberts. “We have awkwardly called it the 'new room.' I am glad it is christened. I will have some curtains hung through the centre to-morrow, to make parlors instead of parlor of it; I can see how a second room can be made useful in several ways.”
Thus was the bewildering committee willed into existence; the chairman thereof being still so dumbfounded with his position that he did not rouse until the laughing boys, by whom he was surrounded, began to take in some of the fun of the situation, and to assault him right and left with mock congratulations, ill-suppressed groans, hisses, and the like. Then he turned towards them with new-born dignity that would have fitted Dirk Colson, and said:—
“If you fellows don't shut up, and behave yourselves something like decent for the rest of the time, I'll chaw half a dozen of you into mincemeat as soon as we are out of this!”