“I’m with you, Doctor,” replied the young man.
“Nate,” he mocked in his comical falsetto, “as you grow older and get further and further from your mother’s loving care, you’ll find that there was some deep-seated natural reason why we men should lead the sheltered life and leave the hurly-burly of existence to the women.”
From long habit, in such cases Mrs. Nesbit tried not to smile and, from long habit, failed. “Doctor Jim,” she cried as he picked up her ball, and set it for her, “don’t make a fool of yourself.”
The little man patted the earth under the ball, and looked up and said as he took her hand, and obviously squeezed it for the spectators, as he rose.
“My dear–it’s unnecessary. You have made one of me every happy minute for forty years,” and smiling at the lovers and their children, he took the hand held out for him after she had sent the ball over the hill, and they went away as he chuckled over his shoulder and cheeped: “Into the twilight’s purple rim–through all the world she followed him,” and trotting behind her as she went striding into the sunset, they disappeared over the hill.
When they had disappeared Anne began thinking of her picnic. She and Nathan left the children at the lake, and walked to the club house for the baskets. On the veranda they met Captain Morton in white flannels with a gorgeous purple necktie and a panama hat of a price that made Anne gasp. He came bustling up to Anne and Nathan and said:
“Surprise party–I’m going to give the girls a little surprise party next week–next Tuesday, and I want you to come–what say? Out here–next Tuesday night–going to have all the old friends–every one that ever bought a window hanger, or a churn, or a sewing machine, or a Peerless cooker, or a Household Horse–but keep it quiet–surprise on the girls, eh?”
When they had accepted, the Captain lowered his voice and said mysteriously: “’Y gory–the old man’s got some ginger in him yet–eh?” and bustled away with a card in 479his hands containing the names of the invited guests, checking the Perrys from the list as he went.
As Captain Morton rounded the corner of the veranda and came into the out-of-door dining room, he found Margaret Van Dorn, sitting at a table by a window with Ahab Wright–flowing white side whiskers and white necktie inviolate and pristine in their perfection. Ahab was clearly confused when the Captain sailed into the room. For there was a breeziness about the Captain’s manner, and although Ahab respected the Captain’s new wealth, still his years of poverty and the meanness of his former calling as a peddler of insignificant things, made Ahab Wright feel a certain squeamishness when he had to receive Captain Morton upon the term which, in Ahab’s mind, a man of so much money should be received.
Mrs. Van Dorn was using her eyes on Ahab. Perhaps they cast the spell. She was leaning forward with her chin in her hands, with both elbows on the table, and Ahab Wright, of the proud, prosperous and highly respectable firm of Wright & Perry, was in much the mental and moral attitude of the bird when the cat creeps up to the tree-trunk. He was not unhappy; not terrorized–just curious and rather resistless, knowing that if danger ever came he could fly. And Mrs. Van Dorn, who had tired of the toys at hand, was adventuring rather aimlessly into the cold blue eyes of Ahab, to see what might be in them.