“Labor Day!” exclaimed Dick, and was promptly hooted.
“No, it’s nothing particular on the Gregorian calendar,” said the doctor, “but it’s an important day on my calendar, I might say our calendar.” And he laid his arm over Harry’s shoulders and pulled her to him.
“Well, it isn’t Harry’s birthday,” said Chub, “because she—”
“And it isn’t the doctor’s,” Dick interrupted, “because that comes in February. We—we observed it last time.” And Dick smiled doubtfully at the doctor.
“You did indeed,” replied the latter, dryly, to the accompaniment of Harry’s laughter.
“What did you do?” asked Chub, gleefully.
“They serenaded me,” said the doctor, with one of his slow smiles. “The music was really nice, but, as it happened at half-past six in the morning, I was obliged to interrupt it. In fact, I was obliged to interview some half-dozen of the leaders at the office. And our friend Dick, here, was one of them.”
“Oh, we didn’t mind, sir,” replied Dick, cheerfully. “You see,” he explained, turning to Chub with a reminiscent grin, “we got up early, about twenty of us, and went to the cottage. There were about eight of us who could play things, and we had two violins, three banjos, a concertina, and—and—”
“A clarionet!” prompted Harry, her eyes dancing.
“Yes, and we made pretty good music. We played ‘Boola’ and ‘Dixie’ and something else. They weren’t especially appropriate, of course, but we had to play what we all knew, or what most of us knew. We were just in the middle of the third number on the program, with everything going finely and the clarionet skipping every third or fourth note, when up went a window and out popped the doctor’s head. ‘What does this mean?’ he asked, very sternly. Then we all cheered and made noises on the fiddles and things, and yelled, ‘Happy birthday, Doctor!’ And the doctor told us to go back to the dormitory instantly. And we went.”