“You are a wonderful bit lass yourself, and I trust you with my poet, even if you haven’t told me just what you are going to do with him,” he answered, and looked at me with the real affection, tempered with amusement, that daddy and Judge Vandyne and Dr. Chubb all use toward me.

I blushed and was just going to tell him that—­well, I don’t know just what I was going to tell him, but I am sure I’d have opened my innermost heart to him, for that is what he invites, when in came Peter and the rest, and we all went in to dinner.  I didn’t see the great dean of the American stage alone any more, but he whispered to me just as Mabel and Miss Greenough and I were leaving the room: 

“Keep my poet easy, and you’ll see what you see.”

I am glad now when I look back on it that my presence did help Peter through the ordeal of that two weeks.  Also Mabel and I had schemes together to take his mind off his dying child, which was being operated on by Farrington to make it a success.  The best diversion, however, was Judge Vandyne’s.  He asked me to make out a list of ten of Peter’s Hayesboro friends, for whom he would send a private car over one of his railroads, to bring them up for the first night of the play.  That was to be the 20th of September, and even then the bills were up all over New York.  I could see, from the way Judge Vandyne was taking it all, that he intended to make the best of having a poet for a son, and to put it through with his usual energetic force.

Peter was perfectly delighted at having all his Hayesboro friends come.  He wrote them all letters, and Mabel wrote them notes.  After that Peter got uneasy and made Judge Vandyne write to everybody, and the next day he insisted that I should write, too.

“Oh, I wish Sam could come, but I know he can’t,” I said, with a sudden hurt place just where I was about to swallow my mushroomed cutlet.

“Sam not come?” said Peter, growing white about his mouth and throwing down his napkin.

“Oh, Peter, Sam didn’t want me to say anything about it, but he doesn’t think it is possible for him to get away and—­and you know, Peter, Sam has to buy the sheep he wants to put in the woods; and I told you that another mule—­”

“I can’t, I can’t stand it for Samboy not to be here,” said Peter as he pushed his cutlet away from him, upset his glass, and turned over a vase that in turn knocked down the center vase of roses, besides upsetting the composure of the butler and one footman.  I saw it was going to be a regular poetic outburst, such as Mammy would have called a tantrum in Sam or me, and that Mabel was positively scared and Miss Greenough much pained.

“Crittenden will be here,” said Judge Vandyne in a perfectly calm and certain voice.  “Don’t worry, son!”

I knew he meant that he would lend Sam the money, or I thought I knew that, and I felt perfectly sure that Sam wouldn’t come.  Nobody knows Samuel Foster Crittenden as I do; and the reason he is so congenial with his mules is that he is so like them in “setness” of disposition.  I just raged at him in my heart, for I knew from the way I felt myself how poor Peter wanted him; but I controlled myself and went right on talking about how I knew the others would come and how much they would enjoy it.