Van Dorn’s neck reddened, as he replied: “Yes–the damn anarchists–class consciousness is what undermines patriotism.”
“And patriotism,” replied the old man, thumbing the 446lapel of his coat that held his loyal legion button, “patriotism is the last resort–of plutocrats!”
He laughed good-naturedly and silently. Then he rose and said as he started to go:
“Well, Tom,–we won’t quarrel over a little thing like our beloved country. Why, Lila–” the old man looked up and saw the girl, “bless my eyes, child, how you do grow, and how pretty you look in your new ginghams–just like your mother, twenty years ago!” Amos Adams was talking to a shy young girl–blue-eyed and brown-haired, who was walking out of the store after buying a bottle of ink of Miss Calvin. Lila spoke to the old man and would have gone with him, but for the booming voice of Mr. Brotherton, the gray-clad benedict, who looked not unlike the huge, pot-bellied gray jars which adorned “the sweet serenity of books and wall paper.”
Mr. Brotherton had glanced up from his ledger at Amos Adams’s mention of Lila’s name. Coming forward, he saw her in her new dress, a bright gingham dress that reached so nearly to her shoe tops that Mr. Brotherton cried: “Well, look who’s here–if it isn’t Miss Van Dorn! And a great pleasure it is to see and know you, Miss Van Dorn.”
He repeated the name two or three times gently, while Lila smiled in shy appreciation of Mr. Brotherton’s ambushed joke. Her father, standing by a squash-necked lavender jug in the “serenity,” did not entirely grasp Mr. Brotherton’s point. But while the father was groping for it, Mr. Brotherton went on:
“Miss Van Dorn, once I had a dear friend–such a dear little friend named Lila. Perhaps you may see her sometimes? Maybe sometimes at night she comes to see you–maybe she peeps in when you are alone and asks to play. Well, say–Lila,” called Mr. Brotherton as gently as a fog horn tooting a nocturne, “if she ever comes, if you ever see her, will you give her my love? It would be highly improper for a married gentleman with asthmatic tendencies and too much waistband to send his love or anything like it to Miss Van Dorn; it would surely cause comment. But if Lila ever comes, Miss Van Dorn,” frolicked the elephant, “give her my love and tell her that often here in the 447serenity, I shut my eyes and see her playing out on Elm Street, a teenty, weenty girl–with blue hair and curly eyes–or maybe it was the other way around,” Mr. Brotherton heaved a prodigious sigh and waved a weary, fat hand–“and here, my lords and gentlemen, is Miss Van Dorn with her dresses down to her shoe tops!”
The girl was smiling and blushing, sheepishly and happily, while Mr. Brotherton was mentally calculating that he would be in his middle fifties before a possible little girl of his might be putting on her first long dresses. It saddened him a little, and he turned, rather subdued, and called into the alcove to the Judge and said:
“Tom, this is our friend, Miss Van Dorn–I was just sending a message by her to a dear–a very dear friend I used to have, named Lila, who is gone. Miss Van Dorn knows Lila, and sees her sometimes. So now that you are here, I’m going to send this to Lila,” he raised the girl’s hand to his lips and awkwardly kissed it, as he said clumsily, “well, say, my dear–will you see that Lila gets that?”
Her father stepped toward the embarrassed girl and spoke: