I’d had the letters dated from my house, and I made Jack spend the night there. I reckoned it might be as well to keep him within reaching distance for the next day or two. He showed up at breakfast in the morning looking like a calf on the way to the killing pens, and I could see that his thoughts were mighty busy following the postman who was delivering those letters. I tried to cheer him up by reading some little odds and ends from the morning paper about other people’s troubles, but they didn’t seem to interest him.
“They must just about have received them,” he finally groaned into his coffee cup. “Why did I send them! What will those girls think of me! They’ll cut me dead – never speak to me again.”
The butler came in before I could tell him that this was about what we’d calculated on their doing, and said: “Beg pardon, sir, but there’s a lady asking for you at the telephone.”
“A lady!” says Jack. “Tell her I’m not here.” Talk to one of those girls, even from a safe distance! He guessed not. He turned as pale as a hog on ice at the thought of it.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the man, “but I’ve already said that you were breakfasting here. She said it was very important.”
I could see that Jack’s curiosity was already getting the best of his scare. After all, he threw out, feeling me, it might be best to hear what she had to say. I thought so, too, and he went to the instrument and shouted “Hello!” in what he tried to make a big, brave voice, but it wobbled a little all the same.
I got the other end of the conversation from him when he was through.
“Hello! Is that you, Jack?” chirped the Curzon girl.
“Yes. Who is that?”
“Edith,” came back. “I have your letter, but I can’t make out what it’s all about. Come this afternoon and tell me, for we’re still good friends, aren’t we, Jack?”
“Yes – certainly,” stammered Jack.
“And you’ll come?”
“Yes,” he answered, and cut her off.
He had hardly recovered from this shock when a messenger boy came with a note, addressed in a woman’s writing.
“Now for it,” he said, and breaking the seal read:
“Jack dear: Your horrid note doesn’t say anything, nor explain anything. Come this afternoon and tell what it means to
MABEL.”
“Here’s a go,” exclaimed Jack, but he looked pleased in a sort of sneaking way. “What do you think of it, Mr. Graham?”
“I don’t like it.”
“Think they intend to cut up?” he asked.
“Like a sausage machine; and yet I don’t see how they can stand for you after that letter.”
“Well, shall I go?”
“Yes, in fact I suppose you must go; but Jack, be a man. Tell ’em plain and straight that you don’t love ’em as you should to marry ’em; say you saw your old girl a few days ago and found you loved her still, or something from the same trough, and stick to it. Take what you deserve. If they hold you up to the bull-ring, the only thing you can do is to propose to take the whole bunch to Utah, and let ’em share and share alike. That’ll settle it. Be firm.”
“As a rock, sir.”
I made Jack come down town and lunch with me, but when I started him off, about two o’clock, he looked so like a cat padding up the back-stairs to where she knows there’s a little canary meat – scared, but happy – that I said once more: “Now be firm, Jack.”
“Firm’s the word, sir,” was the resolute answer.
“And unyielding.”
“As the old guard.” And Jack puffed himself out till he was as chesty as a pigeon on a barn roof, and swung off down the street looking mighty fine and manly from the rear.