“How very tactful of Mr. Bennett!” was all Miss Gerald said, when Miss Dolly related to her the little incident.
“That’s just what I adore in him!” gushed the temperamental little thing. “He doesn’t seem to be afraid of saying anything to anybody. He’s so delightfully frank!”
“Frank, certainly!” answered Miss Gerald icily.
“Anyhow, he’s a regular tango-king!” murmured Miss Dolly dreamily.
“I’m so glad you approve of him, dear!” said Miss Gerald with an enigmatic smile. Perhaps she implied the temperamental little thing found herself in a class, all by herself, in this regard.
The latter flew over to Bob. If he was so “frank” and ingenuous about Miss Schermerhorn, perhaps he would be equally so with other persons. Miss Dolly asked him if he didn’t think the bishop’s sermons “just too dear?” Bob did not. “Why not?” she persisted. Bob had just been reading The Outside of the Pot. “Why not?” repeated Miss Dolly.
“Antediluvian!” groaned Bob, then turned a fiery red. The bishop, standing on the other side of the doorway, had overheard. Maybe Miss Dolly had known he stood there for she now giggled and fled. Bob wanted to sink through the floor, but he couldn’t.
“So, sir, you think my sermons antediluvian?” said the bishop, with a twinkle of the eye. He never got mad, he was the best old man that way that ever happened.
“Yes, sir,” replied Bob, by rote.
“Thank you,” said the bishop, and rubbed his nose. Then he eyed Bob curiously. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. That made Bob feel awful, but he couldn’t retract. The truth as he saw it! – He felt as if he were chained to the wheel of fate – the truth as he saw it, though the heavens fell!
“Of course, that’s only my poor insignificant opinion,” he murmured miserably.
“Every man’s opinion is entitled to respect,” said the bishop.
“Yes, sir,” replied Bob, more miserably still.
The bishop continued to study him. “You interest me, Mr. Bennett.”
“Do I?” said Bob. “I’m rather interesting to myself just now.”
“You evidently agree with the author of The Outside of the Pot?”
“That’s it.” Weakly.
“Well, cheer up,” said the bishop, and walked away.
Later in the day the judge might have been heard to say to the bishop that “that young Bennett cub is a good-for-nothing jackanapes” – from which it might be inferred Bob had somehow managed to rub the judge’s ermine the wrong way.
“Ha! ha!” laughed the bishop. “Did some one ask him what he thought of judges?”
But the judge did not laugh. His frown was awful.
“Or was it about the ‘recall’? Or the relation of judges and corporations?”
The judge looked stern as Jove. “Ass!” he muttered.
“Maybe he’s a progressive,” returned the bishop. “The world seems to be changing. Ought we to change with it, I wonder?”
“I don’t,” snapped the judge. “If the world to-day is producing such fatuous blockheads, give me the world as it was.”
“The trouble is,” said the bishop, again rubbing his nose, “can we get it back? Hasn’t it left us behind and are we ever going to catch up?”
“Fudge!” said the judge. He and the bishop were such old friends, he could take that liberty.
Another of the sterner sex – one of Mrs. Ralston’s guests – looked as if he, too, could have said: “Fudge!” His lips fairly curled when he regarded Bob. He specialized as a vivisectionist, and he was a great authority. Now Bob loved the “under-dog” and was naturally kind and sympathetic. He had been blessed – or cursed – with a very tender heart for such a compact, well-put-up, six foot or so compound of hard-headed masculinity. Miss Dolly – imp of mischief – again rather forced the talk. It must be wonderful to cut things up and juggle with hind legs and kidneys and brains and mix them all up with different animals, until a poor little cat didn’t know if it had a dog’s brain or its own? And was it true that sometimes the dogs me-owed, and when a cat started to purr did it wag its tail instead? This was all right from Miss Dolly, but when the conversation expanded and Bob was appealed to, it was different. “Wouldn’t you just love to mix up the different ‘parts’?” asked Miss Dolly, and put a rabbit’s leg on a pussy, just to watch its expression of surprise when it started to run and found itself only able to jump, or half-jump? That got honest Bob – who couldn’t have carved up a poor dumb beast, to save his life – fairly involved, and before he had staggered from that conversational morass, he had offended Authority about two dozen times. Indeed, Authority openly turned its back on him. Authority found Bob impossible.
These are fair samples of a few of his experiences. And all the while he had an uneasy presentiment that Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence were waiting to get him and have their innings. Now, Mrs. Dan would bestow upon him a too sweet smile between games of tennis; then Mrs. Clarence would drift casually in his direction, but something would happen that would prevent a heart-to-heart duologue, and she would as casually drift away again. These hit-and-miss tactics, however, gradually got on Bob’s nerves, and in consequence, he who was usually a star and a cracker jack at the game, played abominable tennis that afternoon – thus enhancing his unpopularity with divers partners who simply couldn’t understand why he had fallen off so. Indeed, about every one he came in contact with was profoundly dissatisfied or disgusted with Bob. Miss Gerald, who usually played with him, now firmly but unostentatiously, avoided him, and though Bob couldn’t blame her, of course, still the fact did not tend to mitigate his melancholy.
How different in the past! – that glorious, never-to-be-forgotten past! Then he had inwardly reveled and rejoiced in her lithe movements – for with all her stateliness and proud carriage, she was like a young panther for grace. Now as luckless Bob played with some one else, a tantalizing college ditty floated through his brain: “I wonder who’s kissing her now?”
Of course, no one was. She wasn’t that kind. Though some one, some day, would! It was in the natural order of things bound to occur, and Bob, in fancy, saw those disdainful red lips, with some one hovering over, as he swung at a white ball and sent it – well, not where he should have.
“You are playing very badly, partner,” a reproving voice reminded him.
Bob muttered something. Confound that frivolous haunting song! He would dismiss the dire and absurd possibility. Some one else was with her, though, and that was sufficiently poignant. There were several of the fellows tremendously smitten in that quarter. Fine, husky athletic chaps, too! Some of them quite expert at wooing, no doubt, for devotees of house-parties become educated and acquire finesse. They don’t have to tell the truth all the time, but on the contrary, are privileged to prevaricate in the most artistic manner. They can gaze into beautiful eyes and swear that they have “never before,” and so on. They can perform prodigies of prevarication and “get away” with them. Bob played now even worse than before.
The sun got low at last, however, and wearily he retired to his room, to change his garments for dinner. Incidentally, he surveyed himself in the mirror with haunting earnestness of gaze. Had he grown perceptibly older? He thought he could detect a few lines of care on his erstwhile unsullied brow, and with a sigh, he turned away to array himself in the customary black – or “glad rags” – which seemed now, however, but the habiliments of woe. Then he descended to receive a new shock; he found out that Mrs. Ralston had assigned Mrs. Dan to him, to take in to dinner. Drearily Bob wondered if it were mere chance that he had drawn