"I'm deeply flattered"--I began, but at this point Knowlton pressed his buzzer. A stenographer hurried in. "Get me New York on the 'phone," he commanded. "That's all, Teddy. Be there at quarter of seven," and both Hemphill and I found ourselves dismissed without further ceremony. I surrendered in despair. What was the use of fighting? But I made up my mind to be so silent a partner in the evening's proceedings that never again would my services be in demand for filling a gap at a dinner table. Really my rage at being patronized by such people made my hands shake so that my work in the laboratory was useless for the rest of the afternoon. I tingled all over and longed for some way to square the score. I was going to my first dinner party in Deep Harbor like a man from Blankley's--practically hired out for the evening.
I left at ten minutes before six to allow myself a larger margin for dressing. I stopped at the office, but the wise Knowlton had eluded me by going home at half-past five. There was no one with whom I could lodge a final protest.
I dressed in a savage mood. Many caustic epigrams occurred to me as I brushed my hair. I hoped I could remember them for later use that evening. One never can remember a rehearsed conversation; it's like trying to use a handy phrase-book in a foreign country. The other side never leads up to one's cues. At last I was ready, and punctually at a quarter before seven I presented myself before the door of a large old-fashioned house set amid the maples of Myrtle Boulevard, Deep Harbor's most fashionable residential street. The house had been built, I judged, about or immediately after the period of the Civil War. It was square, with a door in the middle flanked on either side by long oval-topped windows. Projecting from the door and coming to meet one in a flight of brown stone steps, was a porch heavily ornamented with what appeared to be a Turco-Bulgarian style of design. In any event, this feature of the house was compounded of strange samples of the carpenter's craft, turned in oriental arabesques such as an architect might dream of after a hasty reading of _Kubla Khan_. Apart from the wanton outburst of the approach, the house was most solemn and dignified, with severe lines, its flat roof topped off by a little square cupola from which I fancied it would be fun to watch for Malbrouck's return from the wars. My curiosity to see within was fully aroused by the time I rang the doorbell. It was always a bother to remember that one was supposed to be angry; I had forgotten my chosen rôle and caught myself anticipating the evening.