Wilma and Edith upbraided him for not knowing by instinct who they were. He accused them of recognizing him and purposely avoiding him. Much more of it was pulled in the same light vein, pro and con.
He was permitted at length to depart for his office. On the way he congratulated himself on the improbability of his ever being obliged to play basketball versus Edith. She must be a whizz in condition. Chances were she’d train down to a hundred and ninety-five before the big games. The other one, Wilma, was a splinter if he ever saw one. You had to keep your eyes peeled or you’d miss her entirely. But suppose you did miss her; what then! If she won her Phi Beta Kappa pin, he thought, it would make her a dandy belt.
These two, he thought, were a misdeal. They should be reshuffled and cut nearer the middle of the deck. Lots of other funny things he thought about these two.
Just before he had left Chicago on this trip, his stenographer had quit him to marry an elevator-starter named Felix Bond. He had phoned one of his cousins and asked him to be on the lookout for a live stenographer who wasn’t likely to take the eye of an elevator-starter. The cousin had had one in mind.
Here was her card on Billy’s desk when he reached the office. It was not a business-card visiting-card, at $3 per hundred. “Miss Violet Moore,” the engraved part said. Above was written: “Mr. Bowen—Call me up any night after seven. Calumet 2678.”
Billy stowed the card in his pocket and plunged into a pile of uninteresting letters.
On the night of the twenty-second there was a family dinner at McDonald’s, and Billy was in on it. At the function he met the rest of them—Bob and his wife, and Aunt Harriet and Aunt Louise.
Bob and his wife, despite the former’s alleged sense of humor, spooned every time they were contiguous. That they were in love with each other, as Ellen had said, was easy to see. The wherefore was more of a puzzle.
Bob’s hirsute adornment having been disturbed by his spouse’s digits during one of the orgies, he went upstairs ten minutes before dinner time to effect repairs. Mrs. Bob was left alone on the davenport. In performance of his social duties, Billy went over and sat down beside her. She was not, like Miss Muffet, frightened away, but terror or some other fiend rendered her temporarily dumb. The game Mr. Bowen was making his fifth attempt to pry open a conversation when Bob came back.
To the impartial observer the scene on the davenport appeared heartless enough. There was a generous neutral zone between Billy and Flo, that being an abbreviation of Mrs. Bob’s given name, which, as a few may suspect, was Florence. Billy was working hard and his face was flushed with the effort. The flush may have aroused Bob’s suspicions. At any rate, he strode across the room, scowling almost audibly, shot a glance at Billy that would have made the Kaiser wince, halted magnificently in front of his wife, and commanded her to accompany him to the hall.
Billy’s flush became ace high. He was about to get up and break a chair when a look from Ellen stopped him. She was at his side before the pair of Bobs had skidded out of the room.
“Please don’t mind,” she begged. “He’s crazy. I forgot to tell you that he’s insanely jealous.”
“Did I understand you to say he had a sense of humor?”
“It doesn’t work where Flo’s concerned. If he sees her talking to a man he goes wild.”
“With astonishment, probably,” said Billy.
“You’re a nice boy,” said Ellen irrelevantly.
Dinner was announced and Mr. Bowen was glad to observe that Flo’s terrestrial body was still intact. He was glad, too, to note that Bob was no longer frothing. He learned for the first time that the Case and Kathryn were of the party. Mrs. McDonald had wanted to make sure of Walter’s presence; hence the presence of his crush.
Kathryn giggled when she was presented to Billy. It made him uncomfortable and he thought for a moment that a couple of studs had fallen out. He soon discovered, however, that the giggle was permanent, just as much a part of Kathryn as her fraction of a nose. He looked forward with new interest to the soup course, but was disappointed to find that she could negotiate it without disturbing the giggle or the linen.
He next centred his attention on Wilma and Edith. Another disappointment was in store. There were as many and as large oysters in Wilma’s soup as in anyone’s. She ate them all, and, so far as appearances went, was the same Wilma. He had expected that Edith would either diet or plunge. But Edith was as prosaic in her consumption of victuals as Ellen, for instance, or Aunt Louise.
He must content himself for the present with Aunt Louise. She was sitting directly opposite and he had an unobstructed view of the widest part he had ever seen in woman’s hair.
“Ogden Avenue,” he said to himself.
Aunt Louise was telling about her experiences and Aunt Harriet’s among the heathen of Peoria Street.
“You never would dream there were such people!” said she.
“I suppose most of them are foreign born,” supposed her brother, who was Mr. McDonald.
“Practically all of them,” said Aunt Louise.
Billy wanted to ask her whether she had ever missionaried among the Indians. He thought possibly an attempt to scalp her had failed by a narrow margin.
Between courses Edith worked hard to draw out his predicated comicality and Wilma worked as hard to make him sound his low notes. Their labors were in vain. He was not sleepy enough to be deep, and he was fourteen highballs shy of comedy.
In disgust, perhaps, at her failure to
