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In company with Westley Keyts and Eubanks, I watched this procession from the windows of the City Hotel. Solon Denney chanced to pass at the moment, and we hailed him. "Oh, I'll soon fix that," said Solon, confidently. "Don't you worry!" And forthwith he sent Billy Durgin, who works in the City Hotel, to Hoffmuller's. He was to remind Colonel Potts that his train left at eleven-eight.
By tact alone had he achieved that which open sneers, covert insult, abuse, ridicule, contumely, and forthright threats had failed to consummate, and in the first flush of the news we all felt much as Westley Keyts said he did. "Solon Denney is some subtler than me," said Westley, in a winning spirit of concession; "I can see that, now.
The idea of a passel of strong, husky young men settin' around on porches in their white pants and calling it 'passing the summer. I ain't never found time to pass any summers." The wanderer expressed a proper regret for this decadence. Mr. Keyts reverted bitterly to the Bon Ton market: "Good name for a tooth powder, or a patent necktie, or an egg-beater.
Judge Robinson, from one sidelong glance, brought off detailed intelligence of the bonnet's checkered past. The elder Miss Eubanks decried the mannishness of cane-bearing; and Mrs. Westley Keyts, entering the shop as Miss Caroline was bowed out, declared that her silk stockings were of a hue hardly respectable, and that she wore shoes "twice too small for her."
Big Joe told him he ought to be in better business than trying to break up a pleasant party. As the 'bus started, the strains of "Auld Lang Syne" floated to us again, and we knew the day was lost. "A hand of iron in a cunning little velvet glove," said Westley Keyts, in deep disgust as he left us. "It looks to me a darned sight more like a hand of mush in a glove of the same!"
Westley Keyts, being skilfully awakened without scandal by his wife, drank a cup of strong coffee to clear his brain, and cordially consumed as many segments of cake as he was able to glean from passing trays, speculating comfortably, meanwhile, about the message of Emerson, chiefly as to why Emerson had not sent it by mail, thus saving he estimated at least a hundred and twenty dollars in telegraph tolls.
"This is no time to split hairs, Bundy," said Solon; and I believe I added, "Don't be quixotic, Mr. Bundy!" Hereupon Westley Keyts broke in brightly. "Why, now, they'll see in a minute that the whole thing was meant as a joke.
Said Westley Keyts, "If it was raining whiskey, Potts wouldn't drink as much as he could ketch on a fork!" and to this the town agreed. For once Potts was firm. His alpaca suit had visibly deteriorated during the campaign, and his tall hat again cried for the glossing ministry of a heated iron, but his virtue burgeoned under stress and flowered to beauty in the sight of men.
I considered that the company would have given up at least five hundred more to avoid being sued for the death of a man who had been able to evoke those letters; but I did not say so, for the case was Truman's and eight hundred dollars were many. Westley Keyts thought they were, indeed, a great many, and outrageously excessive as a cold money valuation of Potts.
Again, Westley Keyts could read how to cut up meats. He knew already, but this chapter, illustrated with neat carcasses marked off into numbered squares, convinced him that the book was not so light as some of its other chapters indicated, and determined him to its purchase. And there were letters for every conceivable emergency.
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