I was about to try to make an escape when a momentary cessation of hostilities was caused by the entrance of a moth-eaten, abstracted-looking man. As the two-year-old hailed him as “fadder”, I gathered that he was the person responsible for the family now fighting at his feet.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked helplessly.
“She gave Thag a nickel,” explained the eldest boy, “and we want it.”
The man drew a sigh of relief. The solution of this family problem was instantly and satisfactorily met by an impartial distribution of nickels.
With demoniac whoops of delight, the contestants fled from the room.
I introduced myself to the man of the house, who seemed to realize that some sort of compulsory conventionalities must be observed. He looked hopelessly at his wife, and seeing that she was beyond response to an S O S call to things mundane, he frankly but impressively informed me that I must expect nothing of them socially as their lives were devoted to research and study. The children, however, he assured me, could run over frequently to see us.
I instinctively felt that my call was considered ended, so I took my departure. I related the details of my neighborly visit to Silvia, but her sense of humor was not stirred. It was entirely dominated by her dread of the young Polydores.
“How many children are there?” she asked faintly. “More than the five you said you counted that first day?”
“They seemed not so many as much. That is, though I suppose in round numbers there are but five, yet each of those five is equal to at least three ordinary children.”
“Are they all boys? Huldah says the youngest wears dresses.”
“Nevertheless he is a boy. They are all unmistakably boys. I think they must have been born with boots on and,” conscious of the imprints of my shins, “hobnail boots at that. Even the youngest, a two-year old, seems to have been graduated from Home Rule.”
“I can’t bear to think of their going to bed hungry,” she said wistfully. “Think of that unnatural mother expecting them to satisfy their hunger by popcorn.”
“They didn’t though,” I assured her. “I saw them stop a street vender below here and invest their nickels in hot dogs.”
“Hot dogs!” repeated Silvia in horror.
“Wienerwursts,” I hastened to interpret.
Chapter III
In Which We Are Pestered by Polydores
Our life now became one long round of Polydores. They were with us burr-tight, and attached themselves to me with dog-like devotion, remaining utterly impervious to Silvia’s aloofness and repulses. At last, however, she succumbed to their presence as one of the things inevitable.
“The Polydores are here to stay,” she acknowledged in a calmness-of-despair voice.
“They don’t seem to be homebodies,” I allowed.
The children were not literary like the other productions of their profound parents, but were a band of robust, active youngsters unburdened with brains, excepting Ptolemy of soup plate fame. Not that he betrayed any tendencies toward a learned line, but he was possessed of an occult, uncanny, wizard-like wisdom that was disconcerting. His contemplative eyes seemed to search my soul and read my inmost thoughts.
Pythagoras, Emerald, and Demetrius, aged respectively nine, eight, and seven, were very much alike in looks and size, being so many pinched caricatures of their mother. To Silvia they were bewildering whirlwinds, but Huldah, who seemed to have difficulty in telling them apart, always classified them as “Them three”, and Silvia and I fell into the habit of referring to them in the same way. Huldah could not master the Polydore given names either by memory or pronunciation. Ptolemy, whose name was shortened to “Tolly” by Diogenes, she called “Polly.” When she was on speaking terms with “Them three” she nicknamed them “Thaggy, Emmy, and Meetie.”
Diogenes, the two-year old, was a Tartar when emulating his brothers. Alone, he was sometimes normal and a shade more like ordinary children.
When they first began swarming in upon us, Silvia drew many lines which, however, the Polydores promptly effaced.
“They shall not eat here, anyway,” she emphatically declared.
This was her last stand and she went down ingloriously.
One day while we were seated at the table enjoying some of Huldah’s most palatable dishes, Ptolemy came in. There ensued on our part a silence which the lad made no effort to break. Silvia and I each slipped him a side glance. He stood statuesque, watching us with the mute wistfulness of a hungry animal. There were unwonted small red specks high upon his cheekbones, symptoms, Silvia thought, of starvation.
She was moved to ask, though reluctantly and perfunctorily:
“Haven’t you been to dinner, Ptolemy?”
“Yes,” he admitted quickly, “but I could eat another.”
Assuming that the forced inquiry was an invitation, before protest could be entered he supplied himself with a plate and helped himself to food. His need and relish of the meal weakened Silvia’s fortifications.
This opening, of course, was the wedge that let in other Polydores, and thereafter we seldom sat down to a meal without the presence of one or more members of the illustrious and famished family, who made themselves as entirely at home as would a troop of foraging soldiers. Silvia gazed upon their devouring of food with the same surprised, shocked, and yet interested manner in which one watches the feeding of animals.
“I suppose he ought not to eat so many pickles,” she remarked one day, as Emerald consumed his ninth Dill.
“You can’t kill a Polydore,” I assured her.
I never opened a door but more or less Polydores fell in. They were at the left of us and at the right of us, with Diogenes always under foot. We had no privacy. I found myself waking suddenly in the night with the uncomfortable feeling that Ptolemy lurked in a dark corner or two of my bedroom.
Even Silvia’s boudoir was not free from their invasion. But one door in our house remained closed to them. They found no open sesame to Huldah’s apartment.
“I wish she would let me in on her system,” I said. “I wonder how she manages to keep them on the outside?”
“I can tell you,” confided Silvia. “Emerald and Demetrius went in one day and she dropped Demetrius out the window and kicked Emerald out the door. You know, Lucien, you are too softhearted to resort to such measures.”
“I was once,” I confessed, “but I think under Polydore régime I am getting stoical enough to follow in Huldah’s footsteps and go her one better.”
Our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Diogenes.
Silvia screamed.
Turning to see what the latest Polydore perpetration might be, I saw that Diogenes was frothing at the mouth.
“Oh, he’s having a fit!” exclaimed Silvia frantically. “Call Huldah! Put him in a hot bath. Quick, Lucien, turn on the hot water.”
“Not I,” I refused grimly. “Let him have a fit and fall in it.”
“He ain’t got no fit,” was the cheerful assurance of Pythagoras, as he sauntered in.
“Your mother would have one,” I told him, “if she could hear your English.”
“What is the matter with him?” asked Silvia. “Does he often foam in this way?”
“He’s been eating your tooth powder,” explained Pythagoras. “He likes it ’cause it tastes like peppermint, and then he drank some water before he swallowed the powder and it all fizzed up and run out his mouth.”
“I