CHAPTER LIV.

OBSTINACY.

The next morning Peter found that his prayer for a rainy day had been answered, and came down to breakfast in the pleasantest of humors.

“See how joyful his future Excellency looks already,” said Watts, promptly recalling Peter to the serious part of life.  And fortunately too, for from that moment, the time which he had hoped to have alone (if two ever can be alone), began to be pilfered from him.  Hardly were they seated at breakfast when Pell dropped in to congratulate him, and from that moment, despite the rain, every friend in Newport seemed to feel it a bounden duty to do the same, and to stay the longer because of the rain.  Peter wished he had set the time for the Convention two days earlier or two days later.

“I hope you won’t ask any of these people to luncheon,” Peter said in an aside to Mrs. D’Alloi.

“Why?” he was asked.

Peter looked puzzled, and finally said weakly, “I—­I have a good deal to do.”

And then as proper punishment for his misdemeanor, the footman announced Dorothy and Miss Biddle, Ray and Ogden.  Dorothy sailed into the room with the announcement: 

“We’ve all come to luncheon if we are asked.”

“Oh, Peter,” said Ray, when they were seated at the table.  “Have you seen this morning’s ‘Voice of Labor?’ No?  Good gracious, they’ve raked up that old verse in Watts’s class-song and print it as proof that you were a drunkard in your college days.  Here it is.  Set to music and headed ‘Saloon Pete.’”

“Look here, Ray, we must write to the ‘Voice’ and tell them the truth,” said Watts.

“Never write to the paper that tells the lie,” said Peter, laughing.  “Always write to the one that doesn’t.  Then it will go for the other paper.  But I wouldn’t take the trouble in this case.  The opposition would merely say that:  ’Of course Mr. Stirling’s intimate friends are bound to give such a construction to the song, and the attempt does them credit.’”

“But why don’t you deny it, Peter?” asked Leonore anxiously.  “It’s awful to think of people saying you are a drunkard!”

“If I denied the untruths told of me I should have my hands full.  Nobody believes such things, except the people who are ready to believe them.  They wouldn’t believe otherwise, no matter what I said.  If you think a man is a scoundrel, you are not going to believe his word.”

“But, Peter,” said Mrs. D’Alloi, “you ought to deny them for the future.  After you and your friends are dead, people will go back to the newspapers, and see what they said about you, and then will misjudge you.”

“I am not afraid of that.  I shall hardly be of enough account to figure in history, or if I become so, such attacks will not hurt me.  Why, Washington was charged by the papers of his day, with being a murderer, a traitor, and a tyrant.  And Lincoln was vilified to an extent which seems impossible now.  The greater the man, the greater the abuse.”