Chapter XXII

Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?—_Richard III_, i, 2.

Although the afternoon performance was scheduled for three o’clock, Jack and Chub, anxious to be in time, arrived at the Adams house while Miss Esther and her guests were still at breakfast.

“We’re all weddy,” announced Chub, consciously patting down her starched white ruffles, and turning her back to give a better view of her pink sash bows.

Jack, no less conscious of his new sailor suit, but striving manfully not to call undue attention to it, remarked, casually, “I s’pose we’re a little early, but we’ll wait till you’re ready to go.”

“How fortunate,” said Lincoln; “then you’ll be here to help us watch the morning parade go by.”

“Yeth,” said Chub; “we’re going to thit on the gate-potht, and you can hold uth on.”

“Huh,” said Jack; “I don’t need to be held on. I wasn’t last year, and I didn’t fall off but once, and that was when the elephant hollered.”

“I will be held on,” said Chub, “by Uncle Linkum.”

“You’ll have to sit backward, Chub, so the folks in the parade can see that big sash of yours.”

Chub said nothing, but after a few moments’ deep thought began tugging at her pink sash so effectively that she finally landed the big bow exactly in front.

“There!” she said, with a satisfied sigh.

By eleven o’clock the children were on their respective gate-posts, Miss Esther and Dr. Bushnell occupying large arm-chairs in the gateway between them. The rest of the party were ranged along the fence on either side like birds on a telegraph wire.

Rocking amiably, his finger tips together in an attitude of judicial consideration, Dr. Bushnell filled the hour of waiting with pleasant discourse. Whitfield always expected to wait an hour after the scheduled time for the arrival of the circus parade, and in this it was never disappointed.

“It has gratified me to note,” the Doctor said, “that the proprietors of this exhibition have among their collected animals a fine specimen of the wombat.”

“Whath a wombat?” asked Chub.

“A wombat,” went on Dr. Bushnell, with the air of imparting information to a large audience,—“a wombat is simply a _Phascolomys ursinus_. It is fond of hay—”

“We’ll take some hay along for the wombat,” said Lincoln, kindly.

“—which he bites into short pieces with his knife-edged teeth. As the poet has it,

Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For ’tis—for ’tis—”

“Their nature to,” put in Miss Esther, involuntarily.

“True,” continued Dr. Bushnell; “and it is the wombat’s nature to excavate the earth until it forms a deep tunnel. The wombat is by no means an active animal, but trudges along with a heavy, rolling waddle, like the gait of a very fat bear.”

“I have always admired the gait of a very fat bear,” said Brewster, dispassionately. “There is something peculiarly attractive and exceedingly graceful about it.”

Dr. Bushnell was a trifle ruffled by this slighting allusion to his favored animal, and went on with some asperity.

“A wombat, my dear sir, is far from being an ungraceful animal. I take it you have never seen one on its native heath. Indeed, a perfect wombat, a perfect wombat—”

“Nobly planned,” said Miss Esther, helpfully.

At this Lincoln Dodd fell off the fence.

“Ho!” said Chub; “Uncle Linkum wath going to hold me on, and now he’th felled off himthelf!”

Except that Lincoln was nearly choked to death by Chub in her exuberance over the little white ponies, the parade passed without accident. Dr. Bushnell gazed eagerly at the open cages, and disappointedly at the closed ones, hoping to see the promised wombat. He philosophically met his failure to find it by an unshaken confidence in its appearance at the show proper.

* * * * *

At the afternoon performance Lincoln took especial charge of Chub. This proved to be a more arduous undertaking than he had anticipated. Twice he pulled her out from under the seats, and once he rescued her from apparent instant death at the feet of the elephant. He was also obliged to temper generosity with wisdom in the matter of pink lemonade and peanuts.

Miss Esther had started under the mistaken impression that she was taking charge of Jack, but he soon made it evident that his understanding of the case was that she was in his charge. He grandly offered her prize packages of gum. He bought for her a complete programme of the whole show, and carefully scrutinized the numbers on their tickets and seats to make sure that they corresponded.

Miss Esther herself was enjoying the afternoon. Aside from the entertainment provided by the circus troupe, she was delightedly entertained by the performances of her own immediate circle. Lillian and Mr. Dodd were a most exemplary engaged couple. Jean and Putnam, if not announced allies, were at least preserving an armed truce. As for Helen and Brewster, the more she saw them together, the more she thought that they were born for each other, and she felt confident that soon they would realize this for themselves. In consequence of this, it seemed to Miss Esther that the last cloud was dissipated and that the intents of her Matrimonial Bureau were practically the same as fulfilled.

To the exclusion of the startlingly incredible feats in the ring, Miss Esther’s thoughts were entirely concentrated on the pleasant outcome of her plans. It was with an expression of blank surprise, and a half conscious realization of impending disaster, that she looked up suddenly and saw Julia Fowler coming toward her along the aisle. Her first impulse was to stay the invader’s advance at any cost. Involuntarily, she half rose from her seat and glared at the intruder. Her unwelcoming expression was entirely lost on Miss Fowler, who rushed up to her and shook her warmly by both hands.

“I’m so glad to see you again!” she cried.

“How do you do?” said Miss Esther, perfunctorily, and with a frigidity of manner that would have repelled a less volatile personage than Julia Fowler.

“Isn’t the circus perfectly lovely!” she exclaimed. “I’m enjoying it so much, and when I saw your party I flew right over here, and Lieutenant Adams has asked me to go home to dinner with you all, and come back to the show to-night—and may I go?”

However much she may have wanted to, Miss Esther’s ideas of hospitality would not allow her to say no. “Certainly,” she said; and if the invitation was not noticeably heartfelt, Julia seemed to overlook any lack of enthusiasm. Of course, Miss Esther still realized, and more emphatically than ever as she looked at Julia, the dangers involved. Mr. Dodd was out of the running. Lincoln’s heart interests were not her affair; but Putnam was decidedly susceptible, and her ideas of Brewster’s intentions toward Helen were as yet so unauthorized that she was by no means certain that they might not be easily swerved. Still, the mischief was done; the blow had fallen, and as a consequence, the Adams pluck rose triumphant.

But Miss Esther had crossed her bridge before she came to it. At dinner that night Julia was a decided acquisition, and charmed everybody. But the two men for whom Miss Esther had feared the most were not unduly interested in the fair visitor. Indeed, the only one who surrendered at sight was Lincoln Dodd. This state of mind, however, on Lincoln’s part was not necessarily a permanence, as Miss Esther well knew. Putnam, of course, showed the courteous deference and gentle consideration which all women received from him, but there was no apparent undercurrent of personal interest; Brewster maintained his usual attitude of polite indifference, which, however, had in it no lack of civility, but neither did it show any trace of a special attraction.

Although Whitfield went to the afternoon performance ostensibly for the benefit of its juvenile element, in the evening it attended the show frankly and openly for its own amusement. Following this precedent the Adams house-party at eight o’clock again bundled into the automobile and started for the tent. The men vowed that it was the hardest day’s work they had ever done in their lives, but the girls took the day as a matter of course, and would not hear of omitting any part of the regulation programme.

Miss Esther’s complacency was restored by the turn affairs had taken, and her mind was relieved regarding Julia’s invasion. Therefore, she started off in the same high spirits that had marked the early afternoon.

The circus managers, desirous of saving every possible scrap of time, had facilitated the midnight moving of their paraphernalia by taking the roof off the tent before the beginning of the evening performance. After sunset, and if the weather permitted, they always did this. The plan was acceptable to the audience, and the general effect of the crowded tent, open to the starry heavens, appealed especially to Brewster as a picturesquely humorous situation. Desirous of seeing it all from the best possible viewpoint, he asked Helen to sit with him in the top row of seats. The rest preferred seats nearer the ground, Lincoln devoting himself to Julia, and Miss Esther, supremely satisfied, listening willingly to Dr. Bushnell’s oratorical periods.

“What a curious picture,” said Helen, as she took her seat.

“Yes,” replied Brewster; “I never saw anything just like it before.”

“I have seen this every year,” said Helen, “but it always impresses me anew. The incongruity of the tawdry, noisy glitter of the scene below, compared to the calm beauty of the stars above, is—”

“Is, perhaps, the ultimate contrast?”

“Yes, that is exactly what I mean. Why is it, I wonder, that I can’t express myself as I want to? You always seem to know just what word to use.”

“Perhaps I know more words than you do.”

“No, I know words enough, but I never can command them at the time I want them, though they often come to me when it is too late to use them.”

“Like Thackeray’s cab wit,” suggested Brewster.

“Yes, I can quite picture him, disconsolate in his cab, saying to himself the bright things which he ought to have said an hour before. I have done the same thing.”

“You should have a preceptor, one who could teach you to say the right thing at the right time.”

“It would have to be one who would not only understand my moods, but be in thorough sympathy with them; some one of—”

“Quick perception,” said Brewster.

“Yes; and gentle—”

“Instincts.”

“Yes; and a way of teaching that would not make me self-conscious or embarrassed.”

“That goes without saying if the teacher be of a true perception and sympathy.”

“_It might as well be you!_” sang a sextette of clowns through six megaphones in the ring.

“So it might,” said Brewster; “in fact it might much better be me than anybody else. I think I will begin now.”

“I wish you would,” said Helen; “I do, honestly, but I’m afraid you will find it a hopeless task. There are so many things that you know so much more about than I do—”

“_There are a few_,” came bellowing up from the megaphone sextette.

“The megaphone men seem inclined to help out,” said Brewster.

“Yes, and I am grateful to any one who will help me.”

“May I try, Helen, though gratitude is not the return I ask?”

“_I may love you too well to let you go_,” vociferated the insistent megaphones.

Helen looked at Brewster. “The megaphone men _are_ helping,” she said.

“Would you have said that if you had thought of it in time?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Helen.