Meggs had been told to bring up a long-neglected bottle of choice Burgundy. In the opinion of the elder Merrick, wine like this deserved to be caressed, its colour admired, its fragrance inhaled, its story reconstructed. It was to be sipped, drop by drop. It pleased him that Bobby seemed to know how. Liquid sunshine, it was; sunshine that had warmed the pleasant banks of the Rhone, in tranquil days before the war. One did not toss it off at a draught. Masterson gulped it. It was good to see Bobby close his eyes as his lips touched the rim of the glass, as if he saw merry groups of barelegged little girls tramping it out in the shade at the corner of some Provençal vineyard. The boy was maturing rapidly, reflected old Nicholas. He had the posture and gesture of a man.
“Bobby occasionally insists upon this story,” said Nicholas obediently, “I have repeated it, at his request, many times.”
“And each time it is better,” commented Bobby, appreciatively.
“Let’s have it then, by all means!” shouted Masterson, much more boisterously than he had intended, an error he instantly endeavoured to correct by bowing very formally and dignifiedly in an affirmative to Meggs’ unspoken query as the bottle was again tilted, tentatively, inquiringly, over his glass. Meggs had tried to put into the gesture just the right degree of reserve, but the finesse was a bit too subtle for his customer.
“Well,” said Nicholas, clearing his throat, “it was this way. You see, where Axion now stands, there used to be nothing but pasture fields. Joe Anderson and I, when we were kids, had a contract with most of the village folks to drive their cows out to pasture, every morning, in the summer, and bring them home in the evening to be milked. Each cow was worth a dollar a month to us.
“Out there, in those fields, where we freckled-faced youngsters, with stone bruises on our calloused feet, sat all day, whittling kite sticks, playing mumble-peg, and bragging about the teams we captained at school—three-old-cat; you never played it, either of you—Joe and I later built a couple of big factories which quite changed the look of the landscape.
“These factories also brought changes in most people’s mode of living. Many men, who might have spent all their lives in ordinary financial circumstances, came to have quite a little money. They built big houses, and their children took on airs. It was hard to recognize the place, after a while, and even harder to recognize some of the people.
“Well, no matter how much absorbed we became in our business, Joe and I remained, through the years, just kids—to each other. I suppose it was a subject for many little jokes with other people. We kept up our boyish relations—always bragging about our speed, strength, and endurance, whenever we met, and invariably in the language we had used in the old days. Like ‘Gemunee Crickets!’ and ‘Gosh darn ut!’ and ‘Fer the love o’ Mike!’ It was rather silly, I’ll admit; but we enjoyed it.
“Joe and I used to help our fathers with the hog butchering in November. Every family, in those days, had a few hogs in a pen. The time came, when we were in our late ’teens, that the annual slaughter was left pretty much to our management, and we usually combined forces—pulling it off at the Anderson place, where they had better facilities for such work. We became quite expert butchers, and were very proud of our accomplishment. I dare say our fathers flattered us in the hope of making us too vain to see how glad they were to dodge the job.
“Well, one day, after Joe and I had retired from our business concerns, we were having lunch together at the Country Club. It was brand splinter new; had been open only a week. The only natural hazard, on the golf course, was a little stream where Joe and I used to fish for crawdads and minneys. Nobody ever said ‘minnows.’ On the knoll, where the new club house stood, there had been quite a nice little grove. Joe and I used to sit among those trees, on a log, slapping mosquitoes, and watching for grey squirrels. He owned an old muzzle-loading shotgun. Mighty dangerous toy, too. Wonder we weren’t killed a dozen times.
“We were having a good time reminiscing. It seemed queer to be sitting there, on that spot, lunching at a solid mahogany table sprinkled with Venetian doilies that slid about under crested silver. Everybody belonging to that club had plenty of money, and the club house had been built and equipped without regard for expense. There was a lot of swank too. The servants seemed to have been let into the secret that this was one of our better clubs. The institution was by way of becoming a bit snobbish, we feared. Practically all the natives who belonged to it had been derived from quite humble origins, like Joe’s and mine; and we worried a bit about the decline of the old democracy. It struck us that the mere fact of our having accidentally made a little money didn’t require us to pretend we were of the British peerage.
“At adjoining tables sat some of the second-growth crop of Axionites—male and female—talking about polo and Derbies and regattas and Biarritz and grouse in Scotland; and we thought the general tone of the place should be improved. So we fell to discussing some of the good old times the Axion boys and girls used to have before the automobiles came along and scared the horses off the roads, and drove the cows out of the pastures to make room for the golfers. Then, one of us remembered about the butchering.
“Joe recalled that one time we put on a
