We stood aghast during this speech. Dum looked as though she would welcome Death, the Deliverer, with joy, anything to relieve the strain she was on to keep from exploding with laughter; but Zebedee did not seem to think it was funny at all. He listened with the greatest courtesy and when she had finished with her quotation (which we afterwards agreed was singularly appropriate, since Cæsar had been made "impervious" enough to keep out water as well as wind), he answered her very kindly:
"I thank you, Blanche, for understanding me so well. I can tell you that I, for one, will always remember your waffles; and had I known at the time that there was any more batter, there would not have been any cold ones to find their last ignominious resting place in the garbage pail."
"I also have saved some of your writings, Mr. Tucker,--an editorial that Miss Dum said you had written before you came for your holiday,--and I will put it in my mem'ry book as an epitaph of you."
Then Dum did explode. She made out that she was sneezing and even insisted upon purchasing a menthol inhaler before she went back to Willoughby, declaring she felt a head cold coming on.
The Beach seemed stale, flat and unprofitable somehow when we got back. We missed Miss Cox and above all we missed Zebedee.
"I'm glad we couldn't get the cottage for another month," yawned Dum. "Old Zebedeelums couldn't be here more than once or twice in that time and it would surely be stupid without him;" and all of us agreed with her in our hearts.
The cottage was in a terrible state of disorder. We had been too excited in the morning to do our chores. Beds were unmade, the living-room messy and untidy with sweaters on chairs, crumbs on the table and floor and shades some up, and some down, and some crooked (nothing to my mind gives a room a more forlorn look than window shades at sixes and sevens); the kitchen, usually in the pink of perfection, just as Blanche had left it after cooking what she had termed, a somewhat "forgetable" breakfast.
"Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow," said Dee. "Let's leave this mess and take a dip before supper. We will have fifteen minutes at least before Blanche can get the funeral baked meats on the table."