Chapter XV

Pray thee, let it serve for table talk.—_Merchant of Venice_,
iii, 5.

It was certainly surprising that when Dodd’s father accepted Miss Esther’s invitation and came to the Adams house, the gayety of that particular nation was increased rather than diminished. The young people most interested had felt that the advent of an elderly gentleman might prove an obstacle to the careless fun and frolic which they had enjoyed all summer. Instead of which, Mr. George Washington Dodd, father of Abraham Lincoln Dodd, proved himself not only ready to follow the leader, but to lead the followers. He not only fell in with their plans, but he proposed plans of his own and insisted upon their being carried out.

The plans were usually impracticable, but he insisted just the same, and the attempts at them were just as much fun as if they had been successful. He had not been in the house twenty-four hours before he had turned the East porch inside out. “I think the hammocks would be more comfortable out under the trees,” he said, and out the hammocks went.

Michael was instructed how to trim the box-hedges, and the cook was inducted into the mysteries of a salad dressing which had chives—and not too many. He persuaded all the clocks in the house to strike together, and painted the chicken-coops red because he liked them better so.

He reconstructed Jack’s battle-ship upon more approved models and showed him the distinctive difference between a brig and a brigantine. As for Chub, he proved himself to be an adept in the quelling of the ebullient fits of temper which manifested themselves so often. Her most theatrical pose was to sit down and yell with much enthusiasm, as she did when she first discovered the young men on the East porch. When George Washington Dodd saw this exhibition for the first time, he approached Chub casually, put his hand over her mouth, and said “Stop that!” whereupon Chub immediately stopped. Though often repeated, this process continued efficacious.

In a word Mr. Dodd became a power in the house. Not just such a power as was Lieutenant Adams. Putnam’s masterfulness was actuated by motives which would be considered rules under the Army Regulations, and, so far as he was concerned, they made law. They were reasonable and—well, when he wanted a thing done, he wanted it done instantly. They have that habit of demanding obedience in the Army. Dodd, on the contrary, had the wayward whims of a spoiled child, but carried them out with an unflinching determination before which even Putnam Adams went down.

Miss Esther pondered deeply over this difference in the characters of the two men. She realized that she implicitly obeyed Putnam, and she enjoyed doing so. She assisted in the carrying out of Mr. Dodd’s plans, as they all did, compelled by the sheer force of his whimsical, inconsequent personality.

“He’s like a child,” she thought, “a great, big, overgrown boy; and he’s just made to be humored. If Lillian can only learn to humor him, she can have her own way as much as she likes.”

It was at this point in her meditations that Miss Esther was interrupted by Lincoln Dodd.

“Didn’t I tell you Father would admire your Lillian Hastings?” he said, dropping astride of the first chair he came to.

“Does he?” said Miss Esther, eagerly.

“Does he! I should say so. Just look at them now!”

Miss Esther looked and saw Dodd Senior and Lillian Hastings sitting on the lawn deeply interested in a game of mumble-peg. Although Lillian’s discarded parasol lay only a few feet away, the players sat in the broiling sun, apparently oblivious of the heat.

“Coming on all right, isn’t it?” said Lincoln.

“Yes. I hope so—I think so; but he hasn’t said anything definite.”

“How do you know he hasn’t?” asked Lincoln.

“Oh, I’m sure Lillian would have told me if he had.”

“Perhaps he hasn’t had a chance.”

“Oh, if that’s the case, let’s make a chance for them.”

Lincoln entered into the spirit of the game with enthusiasm. “Let’s ask Lillian to stay to tea,” he exclaimed.

“She’ll stay anyway,” replied Miss Esther; “and besides, that won’t give them a chance alone.”

“Well, ask her to stay to dinner, and Dad can take her home.”

“That will do,” said Miss Esther; “and it’s a lovely moonlight night.”

So the conspiracy succeeded, and Lillian stayed to dinner.

“Am I the only guest?” asked Lillian, when dinner was announced.

“Yes,” said Miss Esther; “that doesn’t embarrass you, does it?”

“I was afraid it might,” said Putnam, “so I’ve sent for Jean. Stay the proceedings, Cousin Esther; she’ll be here in a minute.”

Jean came flying in, becomingly flushed after her run across the field. “I came across lots,” she exclaimed, “because I was in such a hurry to get here. Thank you, so much, Miss Esther, for sending Jack for me.”

“Why, I didn’t send him,” said Miss Esther.

“But he said that you said that I must come because you were going to have strawberry shortcake for dinner.”

“How ridiculous,” said Miss Esther. “I never sent any message at all by Jack, and besides, there aren’t any strawberries now. It’s too late.”

“I never thought of that,” said Jean, looking a little blank. “I was so glad to come,” she explained, ingenuously.

“I sent the message myself,” said Putnam, calmly. “I knew you wouldn’t come unless I sent an invitation from Cousin Esther. And of course, I didn’t mean real strawberry shortcake.”

“Perhaps you didn’t mean for me really to come,” said Jean.

“I meant I really wanted you to come.”

“If I had known that you sent the invitation I wouldn’t have come.”

“Not if you knew that I really wanted you?”

At this, Lincoln, who was behind the speakers, nudged Miss Esther’s arm, and rolled up his eyes ecstatically. Miss Esther looked like a beneficent Machiavelli, and folded her hands with an air of intense complacency.

“Of course,” said Jean, “you always succeed in getting what you want;—that’s your way. But in this case—”

“In this case,” said Putnam, provokingly, “I succeeded in getting you.”

“Indeed you haven’t succeeded in getting me!”

“Well, if I haven’t, I will,” said Putnam, as he rose to go to dinner.

This speech so pleased the conspirators, that Lincoln Dodd seized Miss Esther’s hands, and the two fairly danced down the long hall toward the dining-room.

“Hang out our banners on the outward walls,” sang Miss Esther.

“What for?” asked Lillian, who, accompanied by Mr. Dodd, had joined the procession.

“So people can see them, of course,” said Lincoln. “It’s foolish to hide your banners under a bushel.”

With what Miss Esther deemed a masterpiece of generalship, she arranged that Lillian should sit next to Mr. Dodd. Lillian, willfully misunderstanding instructions, took the chair on the side of the table where Lincoln stood.

“Oh, she doesn’t mean me,” he exclaimed in dismay. “She means the Ancient.”

“What are you?” asked Putnam; “the Honorable?”

“I think,” said Lillian, “that the young Mr. Dodd looks older than the old Mr. Dodd.”

“It’s quite as bad,” said Putnam, “to say ‘the old Mr. Dodd,’ as to say ‘the Ancient.’”

“But I have to distinguish them in some way, and I don’t see that either one looks older than the other.”

“You might call me George,” suggested Mr. Dodd, casually.

“I’m afraid if I did, you would call me Lillian.”

“Very likely,” said Mr. Dodd.

“Let’s order some more banners,” whispered Lincoln to Miss Esther. “I think we’ll need them.”

“What are you talking about?” said Jean. “What are these banners?”

“A banner,” said the Ancient, instructively, “is one who or that which bans.”

“What does ban mean?” asked Lillian.

“A ban,” said the Ancient, still instructively, “is a thing you put things under.”

“I thought it meant to get married,” said Jean.

“That’s when it’s plural,” explained the Ancient, kindly. “It takes two banns to get married.”

“May I interrupt your very wise discourse,” said Putnam, “long enough to request you to pass me the salt?”

“Now that’s always the way,” said the Ancient in an exasperated tone; “the conventional dinner-table appointments are sadly at fault. One never gets fairly started on a logical sequence of ideas, but one is interrupted by a request to pass the salt. I use the term advisedly. The passing of the salt is but a type of the things which we are made to do at the time when we do not want to do them. There should be a remedy for all this. Invention, as it stands to-day, is deplorably neglectful of our minor needs. Invention, after all, is but the application of some well-known force or principle to a new use.”

Here the Ancient produced from his pocket a small mechanical toy. It was a tiny automobile, made of tin and painted red, and when wound up would run by itself for several minutes. Turning it upside down, he proceeded to wind it; then reversing it, and holding the wheels tightly, he emptied into it the contents of Miss Esther’s salt-cellar. Starting it in the direction of Putnam, he released the wheels and the machine moved slowly along the table.

“You see,” he observed, “how easy it is to apply mechanical power in a way which will do the most good. If every dinner-table were supplied with this simple contrivance, it would do away with the passing of the salt. Consequently, there would be no interruption in one’s flow of conversation.”

“With _one’s_ flow of conversation!” said Jean. “And pray, when would the other five get a chance to speak?”

“They wouldn’t,” said the Ancient.

“I don’t see why any one wants to interrupt,” said Lillian, “when the conversation is so instructive and entertaining as Mr. Dodd’s is.”

“Banners!” said Lincoln, aside to Miss Esther.

But later in the evening there was reason to bring in the banners from the outward walls, or at least it seemed so. Miss Esther’s deep-laid scheme for sending the elder Mr. Dodd home with Lillian seemed in imminent peril. When Lillian announced that it was time for her to go, Putnam suggested that as he was about to go home with Jean, Lincoln and Lillian could go with them, and they would all walk around by the brook. Miss Esther was not present at the moment, and though three people strongly objected to the arrangement, as Putnam’s suggestions were looked upon as commands, none of them dared question it.

Lincoln Dodd did not wish to appear ungallant; Washington Dodd was not quite sure that his escort was desired, and Lillian naturally hesitated to express her preference.

Lincoln Dodd rushed into the house, ostensibly to fetch his hat, but really to find Miss Esther. He almost ran over that lady in the hall, and whispered tragically, “Haul in the banners! Awful things are happening! Putnam says I’ve got to go home with Lillian.”

“Putnam, indeed!” cried Miss Esther. “I’ll fix Putnam.”

She hurried out on the veranda.

“Lincoln can’t go home with you, Lillian,” she said. “I want him myself this evening. He promised to—transplant some bulbs for me.”

“They’re night-blooming cereus,” said Lincoln, “and they always have to be moved at night.”

“Yes,” said Miss Esther; “and so, Mr. George Dodd, will you please escort Miss Hastings home?”

“Certainly, if Miss Hastings doesn’t object to the transfer,” said Mr. Dodd; but he spoke without enthusiasm.

“Oh, all Dodds look alike to me,” said Lillian, flippantly.

Miss Esther looked the picture of despair, as, after this speech, Lillian and her apparently unwilling escort walked silently down the path.

“Honestly,” said Miss Esther, “from the depths of your heart, tell me truly what you think; tell me by the light of your greater experience, and by the knowledge you have of your father’s affections; tell me,” she continued, tragically, “_will_ those two hearts find each other?”

She hung on his words with the air of a doomed prisoner awaiting sentence.

“I don’t know,” said Dodd.