Chapter XII

My chief humor is for a tyrant.—_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, i,
2.

Putnam’s tea on the east porch proved a decided success. Abraham Lincoln Dodd was an acquisition, and Miss Esther viewed the entire group with a secret elation that at last she had secured a stage-setting such as she wanted, and furthermore had brought her actors all together upon the scene.

It seemed to her the perfected realization of her attempt to model a situation after those described in her favorite English novels. The wicker tea-table and its complete appointments, the pretty girls in their light summer frocks, the jolly, careless men with their unostentatious thoughtfulness for Putnam, the blue sky, the green, close-cut grass, and even the sweep of the graveled driveway, along which Miss Esther’s imagination could see Lady Rose’s daughter rolling in her victoria,—all these filled her heart with joy. This joy was not expressed in words, but its manifestation was evident in her demeanor and made her, appropriately enough, a fitting central figure for the picture. She looked at the three girls she was so fond of, she looked at her recently acquired collection of cousins, and then she looked curiously at Mr. Dodd and wondered. “I think he will do,” she thought, “and he seems to like Lillian already.”

As a matter of fact, Mr. Dodd seemed to like not only Lillian but all of Miss Esther’s guests, and apparently the regard was mutual. The centre of an admiring group, he was telling of some exciting experience which befell him when he was young. “It wasn’t so bad, then, but after I grew up—” he began.

“But you didn’t grow very far,” interrupted Jean.

“Not up, no; but I grew a lot cross-wise. I think Nature intended me for a sphere.”

“She accomplished her purpose admirably,” said Putnam.

“The minister was telling me the other day,” said Jean, “that I ought to find my sphere. I wonder if you’re it.”

“No,” said Miss Esther, involuntarily. “That is, I mean,” she went on hurriedly, “I won’t have anybody calling my guests spheres or any other geometrical solids. And by the way, Mr. Dodd, what am I to call you? You see, all these other adopted boys of mine I call by their first names.”

“But Mr. Dodd’s first name is so ponderous,” said Helen.

“It is,” said Dodd, hopelessly. “But,” he added, brightening, “they used to call me Little Sunshine.”

“I shall call you Lincoln,” said Miss Esther, decidedly. “It suits you.”

“I am very glad to hear that somebody has at last realized my essential Lincolnic attributes. I have always wanted to issue a proclamation. I am a born proclaimer, and if I could only emancipate somebody from something, I could die happy. I am Lincolnian to the backbone. I was cut out for a great fighter.”

“If you’re talking about fighters,” said Mark, “Fitzsimmons is my choice.”

“Well, call me Fitz if you like. I might just as well have been named after him, if he had done his fighting as early as Lincoln did. He’s another kind of fighter, to be sure, but if a man fights to win, what’s the odds whether he fights men or conditions?”

“I don’t see why men like to fight so much,” said Lillian. “I should think you would rather be something nice. A painter, for instance, like Sir Joshua Reynolds.”

“Oh, I am a painter, and you may call me Sir Josh if you like.”

“Are you really a painter?”

“Yes, I am. I’m a big painter. My last picture was a scene up Gloucester way, and covered the whole coast, all the shore from Rocky Neck to Cape Ann.”

“All on one canvas?” asked Putnam.

“Yes, I wanted it for a certain space, but somehow I got the thing too long, and when I got it home it wouldn’t fit.”

“What did you do then?”

“I had to take a tuck in it,—up and down, you know. It didn’t make any difference. It only cut out a few miles between the DeCamp cottage and the hotels on the eastern shore. That stretch is uninteresting, anyway.”

“I’m awfully glad you paint,” said Lillian; “I paint some, too. If you paint better than I do, you can teach me.”

“I will, with pleasure, and if you paint better than I do, you can teach me.”

Miss Esther smiled. Mr. Dodd was certainly a most tractable man. If she had told him just what she wanted, he couldn’t have fallen in with her plans better. She foresaw a friendship that should begin over the paint tubes, and should lead straight to the deck of the European steamer. “Perhaps I am not exactly the god in the machine,” she thought, while apparently listening to Mrs. Westcott’s periphrases, “but I am the machinist, and I must set the god to work. And if ’t were done when ’t is done, then ’twere well ’twere done quickly.”

Miss Esther regarded Lillian with the expression a chess-player would bestow upon an idle pawn. She decided to make a move upon her matrimonial chessboard. “Lillian,” she said, transparently diplomatic, “wouldn’t you like to take Mr. Dodd over to your studio and let him advise you about that new picture of yours?”

Lillian did want to, but not feeling sure of Mr. Dodd’s state of mind on the subject, she looked at him, inquiringly.

“Nothing I should like better,” said he, jumping up. “As an adviser I am a great success. I make a specialty of advising. I have noticed that nowadays it is the thing to be a specialist.”

“But I thought specialists were surgeons or doctors,” said Edwina Butler. “Are you a doctor?”

“Yes, I am. I administer advice in capsules to my patients, and they’re not always sugar-coated, either.”

“Then sometimes they are hard to take,” said Lillian. “I hope you’ll sugar-coat mine.”

“I don’t know,” Dodd returned. “I haven’t seen your picture yet, and I don’t know what kind you’ll need.”

“Advise her to put her cow back in the pasture,” said Mark.

“Where is she now?” asked Dodd. “Do you allow your cow to paint on your pictures, Miss Hastings, while you’re away?”

“No, it was only a painted cow upon a painted picture, and I unpainted her, because—”

“Because she wouldn’t moo,” interrupted Helen.

“Oh, you are a realist?” asked Dodd.

“Yes. I want to paint cows that can moo,” replied Lillian, “although I may not hear them.”

“They’d scare you to death if they did,” said Jean. “I never knew anybody so afraid of cows as you are.”

“Well, go on,” said Miss Esther. “I’ve no doubt if you meet any cows on the way Mr. Dodd will—”

“Paint them out,” supplemented Putnam.

“We will,” said Dodd as he walked down the steps with Lillian; “but remember that sometimes it requires a good deal of courage to paint out.”

Lillian gave him a glance of admiring appreciation. Miss Esther caught it, and smiled.

Pursuing her rôle of a zealous and very active fate, Miss Esther next proceeded to clear the stage for the more prominent actors in her comedy-drama. “Girls,” she said to the Butler twins, “wouldn’t you like to see something of the place? Why don’t you ask that pair of Westcotts of yours to take you down where Kenneth was fishing the other day? That’s a most romantic spot.”

“Oh, we’re not so romantic as all that,” said Edwina, “or at least if we are, we have plenty of opportunities for romance; but it isn’t often that we get a chance at such a lovely afternoon tea as this is, and we want to stay to it.”

“This is my tea,” said Putnam, “and I can manage it any way I like. Now I’ll interrupt it right here, and you kids go down to the brook. We’ll begin the tea again when you come back.”

“Yes,” said Miss Esther, delighted that her necessary acquiescence with Putnam’s views should coincide so perfectly with her wishes, “run along at once. Stay as long as you like, and be sure to be here at seven o’clock for dinner.”

“They’ll never get back by that time,” said Mrs. Westcott. “You don’t know that quartette as well as I do. They have no idea of time. You ought not to let them go.”

“Why, she’s sending us,” cried Edna. “I don’t care a snip about going.”

“Oh, go along,” said her hostess, “you’ll be back in time.”

The four ran laughing down the steps and crossed the lawn in the direction of the woodland. Elated by her success so far, Miss Esther proceeded to dispose of Helen and Mr. Brewster, for her ultimate plan was nothing less than to leave Jean and Lieutenant Adams in undisturbed possession of the east porch. But Theodore Winthrop Brewster was not so easily managed as the Westcott boys. She made several unsuccessful attempts. “Mr. Brewster,” she said, finally, “have you seen Jack’s ship since he has painted it?”

“I have, indeed,” said Brewster, cheerfully; “in fact I helped him paint it yesterday.”

“But he put on another coat this morning, and it really looks very different. Take Helen up to see it. She’s so interested in Jack’s ship.”

“I’m the one that is interested in Jack’s ship,” broke in Jean; “let me go.”

“Stay where you are,” said Putnam, dictatorially; “you weren’t invited. Miss Fairbanks was.”

“But I don’t want to go,” said Helen. “I am very comfortable here;” and she leaned back in her lounging-chair with one of her best expressions of reposeful content.

“You always exasperate me when you look like that,” said Jean. “I wish Miss Esther would make you go.”

“I can’t,” said Miss Esther. “I can make some people do some things some of the time, but I know better than to order Helen Fairbanks around. Besides, Putnam is the only one here who can make anybody do anything.”

“Try it,” said Helen, looking over at Putnam.

“Not I. I should be proud to have you give me orders, but I should never dream of commanding Miss Helen Fairbanks.”

“Your decision is a wise one, as my family could tell you. Collectively and individually they have tried to make me mind, but without any very startling success.”

“Come with me, Miss Fairbanks,” said Brewster. “There are some interesting details about Jack’s ship that I would like to show you.”

Helen rose smilingly, and with an evident unconsciousness that she was obeying dictation, she walked into the house with Brewster. Putnam caught Miss Esther’s glance across the porch and threw back an amused smile of comprehension.

After Helen and Mr. Brewster left them, Miss Esther diplomatically contrived an exit for herself and Mrs. Westcott. “If you will come into the library with me, Emily,” she said, “I will look up those papers and we will settle those disputed genealogical questions.”

“Oh, there’s no hurry about it,” said Mrs. Westcott, “I shall be here two or three days.”

“Come now,” said Miss Esther, “I’m just in the mood for it.”

She held the door open with such an air of compulsion that Mrs. Westcott reluctantly went in.

Left alone with Putnam on the veranda, Jean, for some unaccountable reason, felt vaguely embarrassed. “I must take these things out to Nora,” she said, as she began rather aimlessly to fuss with the teacups.

“Stay where you are,” said Putnam.

“But you see,” said Jean, “I really must look after these things. It’s Nora’s afternoon out—at least I think it is—and Miss Esther always depends on me to look after things for her—especially if she has company—and so, you see, I really must—”

“Sit down,” said Putnam.