Gifford Barrett came back into the box, trailing after him a huge wreath.  He laid it down at Phebe’s side.

“What in the world is that for?” she demanded.  “I didn’t write your music for you.”

“No” he answered, with a queer little smile; “but perhaps you helped it on.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Billy, I am low in my mind.”

“You look it, Ted; but cheer up.  What’s the matter?”

“Plus a publisher; minus a maid,” she answered enigmatically.

“Explain yourself.”

“I shouldn’t think I needed to.  The bare fact is sufficient.”

“Yes; but I am dense.”

“Well, you knew Hannah had given warning, and now Delia is going, and I expect to take to the kitchen for a space.”

“Where’s Patrick?”

“If that isn’t man all over!  Patrick is a treasure and good for almost everything in the line of work; but I never discovered that he could cook succulently.  I should live through that crisis, William; but there is a worse one.  Mr. Gilwyn is going to lecture here, next week, and he will expect us to entertain him.”

“What of it?  We can buy things.”

“Yes, William, and we must also cook things.  He has never been here, and much depends upon the impression I create on his inner man.  My book will be ready to send in before long; and, if I give him dyspepsia in his stomach, it will surely mount to his brain and lead him to reject my magnum opus.”

“Your which?  Cicely, can you translate her remarks?”

“Ask Melchisedek.  He devoured Allyn’s Latin grammar, day before yesterday,” Cicely responded from the farther side of the room where she was feeding the dog chocolate peppermints, in a futile endeavor to teach him that vertebrae were meant to assist him in sitting up.

“But it is no joke, really,” Theodora went on.  “I can cook, or I can entertain; but I can’t do both.”

“Then go out into the highways and hedges and hire somebody,” her husband suggested.

“I have.  I started with a long list of people who had been recommended to me; but they all are engaged for that day.  One would think the town was going into wholesale banquetings.  For some people, I wouldn’t mind; but Mr. Gilwyn is a pompous, gouty old soul, and moreover, he holds my fortunes in the hollow of his hand.”

“How do you know he is coming?”

“A note, this morning.  He hopes to see me at his lecture, and so on.”

“Let’s shut up the house and run down to New York, for a day or two,” Billy said hospitably.

“No use.  I should feel guilty to the end of my days, and embody my guilt in my next book.  No; I can’t afford to have my ‘healthy tone’ demoralized.  I shall face my duty, even if I have to ask him to sit by the kitchen hob, as Cicely calls it, while I prepare his simple meal.”

Cicely gave the last of the peppermint to Melchisedek who bolted it with an ill-advised greed that brought the tears to his eyes, for the peppermint was a hot one.