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Read Ebook: The Fern Bulletin April 1912 A Quarterly Devoted to Ferns by Various Clute Willard Nelson Editor
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Ebook has 413 lines and 12642 words, and 9 pages
"Mr. or Mrs.?" I interrupted.
"The head of the house," pursued Silvia, ignoring my question, "is a collector."
"So I inferred. Has he a large collection of soup plates?"
"She collects antiquities and writes their history. He pursues science."
"They were seemingly communicative. What did they look like?"
She paused, evidently overcome by the consideration of his awfulness.
"He had been digging bait--"
Again she paused as if words were inadequate for her climax.
"Well," I encouraged.
"He was carrying his bait--horrid, wriggling angleworms--in our soup plate!"
"Then it is not broken yet!" I exclaimed joyfully. "Let us hope it is given an antiseptic bath before father's next indulgence in consomm?. After dinner I will go over and try my luck at paying my respects to the soup savant."
"They won't let you in."
"In that case I shall follow their lead of setting aside all ceremony and formality and admit myself, as their heir apparent does here."
After dinner and my twilight smoke, I went next door, first asking Silvia if there was anything we needed that I could borrow, just to show them there were no hard feelings.
My third vigorous ring brought results. A slipshod servant appeared and reluctantly seated me in the hall. She read with seeming interest the card I handed to her and then, pushing aside some mangy looking porti?res, vanished from view.
She evidently delivered my card, for I heard a woman's voice read my name, "Mr. Lucien Wade."
After another short interval the slovenly servant returned and offered me my card.
"She seen it," she assured me in answer to my look of surprise.
She again put the porti?res between us and I was obliged to own myself baffled in my efforts to break in. I was showing myself out when my onward course was deflected by a troop of noisy children leaded by the soup plate skirmisher, who was the oldest and apparently the leader of the brood.
"Oh, halloa!" he greeted me with the air of an old acquaintance, "didn't you see the folks?"
On my informing him that I had seen no one but the servant, he exclaimed:
"Oh, that chicken wouldn't know enough to ask you in! Just follow us. Mother wouldn't remember to come out."
I was loth to force my presence on mother, but by this time my hospitable young friend had pulled the porti?res so strenuously that they parted from the pole, and I was presented willy nilly to the collector of antiquities, who had the angular sharp-cut face and form of a rocking horse. She was seated at a table strewn with books and papers, writing at a rate of speed that convinced me she was in the throes of an inspiration. I forebore to interrupt. My scruples, however, were not shared by her eldest son. He gave her elbow a jog of reminder which sent her pencil to the floor.
"Mother!" he shouted in megaphone voice, "here's the man next door--the one we get our soup plates from."
She looked up abstractedly.
"Oh," she said in dismayed tone, "I thought you had gone. I am very much engaged in writing a paper on modern antiquities."
I murmured some sort of an apology for my untimely interruption.
"I am so absorbed in my great work," she explained, "that I am oblivious to all else. I have the rare and great gift of concentration in a marked degree."
I was quite sure of this fact. She took another pencil from a supply box and resumed her literary occupation. As my presence seemed of so little moment, I lingered.
"Mother," shouted one of the boys, snatching the pencil from her grasp, "I'm hungry. I didn't have any supper."
"Yes, you did!" she asserted. "I saw Gladys give you a bowl of bread and milk."
"Emerald took it away from me and drank it up."
"Didn't neither!" denied a shaggy looking boy. "I spilled it."
He accompanied this denial by a fierce punch in his accuser's ribs.
"Here!" said the author of Modern Antiquities, taking a nickel from her pocket, "go get yourself some popcorn, Demetrius."
"I ain't Demetrius! I'm Pythagoras."
"It makes no difference. Go and get it and don't speak to me again tonight."
The boy had already snatched the coin, and he now started for the exit, but his outgoing way was instantly blocked by a promiscuous pack of pugilistic Polydores, and an ardent and general onslaught followed.
I endeavored to untangle the arms and legs of the attackers and the attacked in a desire to rescue the youngest, a child of two, but I soon beat a retreat, having no mind to become a punching bag for Polydores.
The concentrator at the writing table, looking up vaguely, perceived the general joust.
"How provoking!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I was in search of an antonym and now they've driven it out of my memory."
I politely offered my sympathy for her loss.
"Did you ever see such misbehaved children?" she asked casually and impersonally as she calmly surveyed the free-for-all fight.
"Children always misbehave before company," I remarked propitiatingly. "Of course they know better."
At this instant the errant antonym evidently flashed upon her mental vision and her pencil hastened to record it and then flew on at lightning speed.
"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.
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