Part 37 (1/2)
”I'm about due to go over there and look over the linen,” remarked Mrs.
Owen, with an air of making a memorandum of a duty neglected.
”Well, I guess it's comfortable enough,” said Marian. ”But I should think you could do better than that, Sylvia. You'll have to eat at the same table with some typewriter pounder. With all your education I should think it would bore you.”
”Sylvia will have to learn about it for herself, Marian,” said Mrs.
Ba.s.sett. ”I've always understood that the executive board is very careful not to admit girls whose character isn't above reproach.”
Mrs. Owen turned the key of her old-fas.h.i.+oned coffee urn sharply upon the cup she was filling and looked her niece in the eye.
”Oh, we're careful, Hallie; we're careful; but I tell 'em not to be _too_ careful!”
”Well, of course the aim is to protect girls,” Mrs. Ba.s.sett replied, conscious of a disconcerting acidity in her aunt's remark.
”I'm not afraid of contamination,” observed Sylvia.
”Of course not _that_,” rejoined Mrs. Ba.s.sett hastily. ”I think it's fine that with your culture you will go and live in such a place; it shows a beautiful spirit of self-sacrifice.”
”Oh, please don't say that! I'm going there just because I want to go!”
And then, smiling to ease the moment's tension, ”I expect to have the best of times at Elizabeth House.”
”Sylvia”--remarked Mrs. Owen, drawling the name a trifle more than usual--”Sylvia can do what she pleases anywhere.”
”I think,” said Ba.s.sett, who had not before entered into the discussion, ”that Aunt Sally has struck the right word there. In these days a girl can do as she likes; and we haven't any business to discuss Miss Garrison's right to live at Elizabeth House.”
”Of course, Sylvia, we didn't mean to seem to criticize you. You know that,” said Mrs. Ba.s.sett, flus.h.i.+ng.
”You are my friends,” said Sylvia, glancing round the table, ”and if there's criticizing to be done, you have the first right.”
”If Sylvia is to be criticized,--and I don't understand that any one has tried it,” remarked Mrs. Owen,--”I want the first chance at her myself.”
And with the snapping of her spectacle case they rose from the table.
They had barely settled themselves in the parlor when Harwood and Allen arrived in Allen's motor. Dan had expected his friend to resent his part in the convention, and he had sought Allen at Luders's shop to satisfy himself that their personal relations had not been disturbed. He had found Allen, at the end of a day's work, perched upon a bench discoursing to the workmen on the Great Experiment. Allen had, it seemed, watched the convention from an obscure corner of the gallery. He p.r.o.nounced Dan's speech ”immense”; ”perfectly bully”; he was extravagant in his praise of it. His father's success in naming the ticket had seemed to him a great triumph. Allen viewed the whole matter with a kind of detachment, as a spectator whose interest is wholly impersonal. He thought there would be a great fight between the combatants; his dad hadn't finished yet, he declared, sententiously. The incidents of the convention had convinced him that the Great Experiment was progressing according to some predestined formula. He and Harwood had dined together at the University Club and he was quite in the humor to call on the Ba.s.setts at Mrs. Owen's; and the coming of Sylvia, as to whom Mrs. Owen had piqued his curiosity, was not to be overlooked.
He cleared the air by brus.h.i.+ng away the convention with a word, addressed daringly to Ba.s.sett:--
”Papa's come back from fis.h.i.+ng! _My_ papa is digging bait,” and they all laughed.
”Miss Garrison, you must be the greatest of girls, for you have my own ideas! Our invincible young orator here has been telling me so!”
”That was a grand speech; many happy returns of the day!” was Marian's greeting to Dan.
”You certainly have a great voice, Daniel,” remarked Mrs. Owen, ”and you had your nerve with you.”
”You were effective from the first moment, Mr. Harwood. You ought to consider going on the lecture platform,” said Mrs. Ba.s.sett.
”Oh, Dan hasn't come to that yet; its only defeated statesmen who spout in the Chautauquas,” Ba.s.sett remarked.
Harwood was in fine fettle. Many men had expressed their approval of him; at the club he had enjoyed the chaffing of the young gentlemen with whom he ate luncheon daily, and whose tolerance of the universe was tinged with a certain cynicism. They liked Harwood; they knew he was a ”smart” fellow; and because they liked and admired him they rallied him freely. The president of a manufacturing company had called at the Boordman Building to retain him in a damage suit; a tribute to his growing fame. Dan was a victim of that error to which young men yield in exultant moments, when, after a first brush with the pickets, they are confident of making their own terms with life. Dan's att.i.tude toward the world was receptive; here in the Ba.s.sett domestic circle he felt no shame at being a Ba.s.sett man. All but Sylvia had spoken to him of his part in the convention, and she turned to him now after a pa.s.sage with Allen that had left the young man radiant.