HEN Professor Phillips received his appointment as a member of the faculty of the Ocean Park summer school, he was much gratified. Moreover, his pride was largely tinctured with relief, the two summer holiday months being usually a period of financial stress. But Mrs. Phillips was less exultant.
“It's all well enough for you, William, to talk of closing the house and leaving to-morrow, but I tell you it can’t be done. With all the furniture to cover, and the silver to take to the safe deposit vault in town, and the curtains to take down and put away, not to mention packing the woolens, and putting newspapers over the carpets—and it’s so hard to find homes for the canary and the cat”
Poor Mrs. Phillips subsided, breathless and incoherent, into a chair. The professor looked at her mildly over his glasses.
“I should think, Amelia,” he said, “that you could close the house in a more leisurely manner and follow me a few days later. It is absolutely necessary for me to be present at the opening of the school on Thursday morning.”
“And leave me to take that long journey alone? Never! With my tendency to car-sickness, tool Besides, there is Jane.”
Yes, there was Jane. For thirteen years all the Phillips’ arrangements had been made with reference to Jane. Guests were invited or not invited as it was Jane’s day in or out; dishes that Jane disliked to cook were omitted from the daily menu; and Mrs. Phillips had been known to curtail the number of flounces on her summer gowns to save Jane’s strength and temper on ironing day.
It was not strange, therefore, that at this question the professor became thoughtful. It was manifestly impossible to take Jane along, and it was equally inexpedient to discharge her. As weighed in the balance, a future containing Jane, with her abilities in the line of scrubbing brushes and well-seasoned viands, more than outweighed a summer at the seashore and a comfortless, Janeless winter thereafter. It is quite possible that the elderly couple in the cozy library would have decided accordingly had not fate, in the shape of a telephone bell, intervened. At the imperative ring the professor rose with a sigh.
“That’s Wilson, I suppose. I told him I would see if any of the neighbors wanted to rent their homes for the summer. Ruth isn’t well, and he and Mrs. Wilson want to get her out of the city for the warm weather. I have been so engrossed with this other matter that I have forgotten to inquire.”
But Mrs. Phillips was looking at him with eyes in which hope was rapidly dawning.
“Why, it’s the very solution of the difficulty,” she said eagerly. “Why not rent them this house?”
The professor had taken down the receiver.
“Yes—yes—hello, Wilson, just hold the line a minute,” he said. Then, with his hand over the transmitter, “What about Jane?” he queried in a stage whisper.
“They can take Jane along with the house,” Mrs. Phillips replied in a similar tone.
And that is how it happened that the following evening saw the professor and Mrs. Phillips departing down the graveled walk for the train, Mrs. Phillips calling back directions about the canary and the water-heater as she vanished into the darkness, while Mrs. Wilson and Ruth waved farewell from the porch.
The older woman went indoors, but Ruth stood a moment in the cool night air and looked about her. On either side of the pretty suburban street were brightly lighted houses, while the sounds of cheerful voices and laughter floated to her across the smooth lawns. She listened a moment to the tuneful tinkle of a guitar, then turned with a sigh, and stepped into the house, closing the door behind her. She paused at the library door, summoning a smile. Smiles had been rather infrequent on her charming face for several months.
“You’re to go to bed at once, both of you. Father, put away your pipe like a good boy. The unpacking is going to wait until morning, and besides, by the time I count ten, the electric light is going out. Now, ready—one, two, three!”
The professor rose reluctantly from the depths of a comfortable chair and emptied his pipe carefully. Mrs. Wilson, after examining the window-locks, picked up her glasses, and, obedient to her imperious daughter’s command, proceeded up-stairs, followed by her husband. Ruth stood for a moment in the hall, her hand on the electric light switch, her eyes on a pale face reflected from the mirror above the hall table, and communed with herself.
“You’re a sentimental, wishy-washy idiot, and I’m ashamed of you! Your complexion has gone, or nearly, and you go around sighing—ah, it’s simply, utterly disgraceful!”