And you should have watched Mr. Robert for the next few days. Talk about consistent trainin'! Why, he quits goin' to the club, cuts out his lunch-hour, and reports at the office at eight-thirty. Not for business, though: Bernard Shaw. Seems he's decided to specialize in Shaw.
Honest, I finds him one noon with a whole tray of lunch gettin' cold, and him sittin' there with his brow furrowed up over one of them batty plays.
"Must be some thrillin'," says I.
"It's clever," says he; "but hanged if I know what it's all about! I must find out though—I must!"
He didn't need to state why. I could see him preparin' to swap highbrow chat with Miss Hampton.
Meanwhile he barely takes time to 'phone a few orders about gettin' the cruisin' yawl ready for the trip. I hear him ring up the Captain, tell him casual to hire a cook and a couple of extra hands, provision for three or four days, and be ready to sail Saturday noon. Which ain't the way he usually does it, believe me! Why, I've known him to hold up a directors' meetin' for an hour while he debated with a yacht tailor whether a mainsail should be thirty-two foot on the hoist, or thirty-one foot six. And instead of shippin' up cases of mineral water and crates of fancy fruit, he has them blamed Shaw books packed careful and expressed to Travers Island, where the boat is.
We was to meet there about noon; but it's after eleven before Mr. Robert shuts his desk and sings out to me to come along. We piles into his roadster and breezes up through town and out towards the Sound. Found the whole party waitin' for us at the club-house: Vee and Marjorie and Miss Hampton, all lookin' more or less yachty.
"Hello!" says Mr. Robert. "Haven't gone aboard yet?"
"Go aboard what, I'd like to know?" speaks up Marjorie.
"Why, the Pyxie," says he. "See, there she is anchored off—well, what the deuce! Pardon me for a moment."