Then we go outside to see that the approach to the house is satisfactory. The bland old gardener points to the ivy-covered wall, and says with innocent joy, '---- it, ain't that ivory the prettiest thing you ever saw in your life?' And we can't deny that the lawn looks well, with ivy, and cosmos, and innumerable chrysanthemums.
The cook and chambermaid will have to help wait on the table. The chambermaid, who is what the butler contemptuously calls 'an educated nigger,' and so knows nothing useful, announces that she has no white uniform. All she has is a cold in her head. We give her a blouse and skirt, wondering why Providence doesn't eliminate the unfit.
We run upstairs to put on our costliest shoes and stockings, and our most perishable gown. The leisurely brother gets us on the wire to say that there will be twenty guests in ten minutes.
Descending, we reset the tables to seat twenty guests, light the wood-fires, toss together twenty mint-juleps, and a few over for luck, repeat our clear instructions to the goggling chambermaid, desperately implore the butler to see that she keeps on the job, drop a last touch of flavoring in the soup, and are sitting by the fire with an air of childish gayety and carelessness when the train of motor-cars draws up to the door.
Here is the judge, courteous and authoritative. Here is his assiduous suite. The room fills with faces well known in every country that an illustrated newspaper can penetrate. From the Golden Gate and the Rio Grande, from New York and Alabama, these men have come together, intent on wresting to themselves the control of the Western Hemisphere. Now they are a sort of highly respectable guerillas. To-morrow, very likely, they will be awe-inspiring magnates.
Theoretically we are impressed. Actually they have mannerisms, and some of them wear spectacles. We reflect that the triumvirs very likely had mannerisms, too, and Antony himself might have been glad to own spectacles. We try to feel reverence for the high calling of these men. We hope they'll like our luncheon.
The butler brings in the juleps and we maintain a detached look, as though those juleps were just a happy thought of the butler himself, and we were as much surprised as anybody. The judge won't have one, but most everybody else will. The newspaper men look love and gratitude at the butler.