“Say we can’t come,” was his advice.
“But I hate to do that. They’ll think we don’t want to and they won’t ask us again. I wish you’d go, and maybe they could ask somebody in to take my place. I don’t suppose you’d consider that, would you?”
Shelton thought it over a moment and said yes, he would.
Before retiring to her darkened room and her bed, Mrs. Shelton called up Mrs. Dittmar. Mrs. Dittmar expressed her sympathy in baby talk and said it was all right for Mr. Shelton to come alone; it was more than all right, Mrs. Shelton gathered, because Mrs. Dittmar’s brother was visiting her and they would be just eight.
Shelton, who had learned long ago that his wife did not want him around when her head was threatening to burst open, stayed in town until six o’clock, preparing himself for the evening’s task with liberal doses of the business manager’s week-old rye. He was not going to be tortured by any drought such as he had endured at the Frenches’. He arrived at the party in grand shape and, to his surprise, was plied with cocktails potent enough to keep him on edge.
Mrs. Dittmar’s brother (she called him her dreat, big B’udder) was an amateur jazz pianist. Or rather, peeanist. He was proving his amateur standing when Shelton got there and something in the way he treated “Rhapsody in Blue” made Shelton resolve to open fire at once. His eagerness was increased when, on the way to the dining room, Mrs. Dittmar observed that her b’udder had not played much contract “either” and she must be sure and not put them (Shelton and B’udder) at the same table, for they might draw each other as partners and that would hardly be fair.
Dinner began and so did Shelton.
“A week ago,” he said, “you folks criticised my bridge playing.”
The Camerons, Dittmars and Frenches looked queer.
“You didn’t mind it, I hope,” said Mrs. Dittmar. “We were just trying to teach you.”
“I didn’t mind it much,” said Shelton. “But I was just wondering whether it was good manners for one person to point out another person’s mistakes when the other person didn’t ask to have them pointed out.”
“Why,” said Cameron, “when one person don’t know as much about a thing as other people, it’s their duty to correct him.”
“You mean just in bridge,” said Shelton.
“I mean in everything,” said Cameron.
“And the person criticised or corrected has no right to resent it?” said Shelton.
“Certainly not!”
“Does everybody here agree with that?”
“Yes,” “Of course,” “Sure,” came from the others.
“Well, then,” said Shelton, “I think it’s my duty to tell you, Mr. Cameron, that soup should be dipped away from you and not toward you.”
There was a puzzled silence, then a laugh, to which Cameron contributed feebly.
“If that’s right I’m glad to know it, and I certainly don’t resent your telling me,” he said.
“It looks like Mr. Shelton was out for revenge,” said Mrs. Cameron.
“And I must inform you, Mrs. Cameron,” said Shelton, “that ‘like’ is not a conjunction. ‘It looks as if Mr. Shelton were out for revenge’ would be the correct phrasing.”
A smothered laugh at the expense of Mrs. Cameron, whose embarrassment showed itself in a terrifying distension of the nostrils. Shelton decided not to pick on her again.
“Let’s change the subject,” said Mrs. Dittmar. “Mr. Shelton’s a mean, bad man and he’ll make us cwy.”
“That verb,” said Shelton, “is cry, not cwy. It is spelled c-r-y.”
“Tell a story, Bob,” said Mrs. French to her husband.
“Well, let’s see,” said French. “I’ll tell the one about the Scotchman and the Jew playing golf. Stop me if anybody’s heard it.”
“I have, for one,” said Shelton.
“Maybe the others haven’t,” said French.
“They must have been unconscious for years,” said Shelton. “But go ahead and tell it. I knew I couldn’t stop you.”
French went ahead and told it, and the others laughed as a rebuke to Shelton.
Cameron wanted things understood.
“You see,” he said, “the reason we made a few little criticisms of your bridge game was because we judged you were a new beginner.”
“I think ‘beginner’ is enough, without the ‘new,’ ” said Shelton. “I don’t know any old beginners excepting, perhaps, people old in years who are doing something or taking up something for the first time. But probably you judged I was a beginner at bridge because of mistakes I made, and you considered my apparent inexperience justified you in criticising me.”
“Yes,” said Cameron.
“Well,” said Shelton, “I judge from observing Mrs. French eat her fish that she is a new beginner at eating and I take the liberty of stating that the fork ought never to be conveyed to the mouth with the left hand, even by a left-handed eater. To be sure, these forks are salad forks, not fish forks, as Mrs. Dittmar may believe. But even salad forks, substituting for fish forks, must not be carried mouthward by the left hand.”
A storm was gathering and Mrs. Cameron sought to ward it off. She asked Mrs. Dittmar what had become of Peterson, a butler.
“He just up and left me last week,” said Mrs. Dittmar. “He was getting too impudent, though, and you can bet I didn’t object to him going.”
“ ‘His going,’ ” said Shelton. “A participle used as a substantive is modified in the possessive.”
Everyone pretended not to hear him.
“This new one is grand!” said Mrs. Dittmar. “I didn’t get up till nearly eleven o’clock this morning—”
“Eleven!” exclaimed Mrs. French.
“Yes. Imagine!” said Mrs. Dittmar. “The itta girl just overslept herself, that’s all.”
“Mrs. Dittmar,” said Shelton, “I have no idea who the itta girl is, but I am interested in your statement that she overslept herself. Would it be possible for her, or any other itta girl, to oversleep somebody else? If it were a sleeping contest, I should think ‘outsleep’ would be preferable, but even so I can’t understand how a girl of any size outsleeps herself.”
The storm broke. Dittmar sprang to his feet.
“That’s enough, Shelton!” he bellowed.
