"Can't you get through?" asked my wife sympathetically.
"Certainly I can get through," I replied; "I'm just doing this to make it look difficult!"
The Purdys laughed at that, and the Duke said I was a comical cuss. You see, he had an idea I was trying to amuse the company. That made me so mad that I dropped the chair to spit on my hands, and when I dropped the chair the stubborn thing fell right through the door of its own accord, and I straightened up like a General, and remarked:
"Now I suppose you'll make a pool among you and gobble all the credit for that!"
To amble back to our muttons, it was a nice, quiet little visit.
During the evening my wife got out some grape-fruit, and in the stilly night, the stars twinkling overhead and the grass growing silently, hardly disturbing us at all, it was exceedingly pleasant to hear the spoons go slippety-slosh into the evasive juices that reluctantly gave up about half what the labor was worth.
But what I started to write about was the house party across the street. When you're sitting on the porch of your own house doing nothing but listening to the ebb and flow of grape-fruit juice, you can't help noticing the strings of Japanese lanterns over yonder, and listening to the gay laughter of young people as they madly hurl bean-bags into a hole in a plank, shrieking the while and guying each other apace. O, Postoffice! O, clap-in-an-clap-out! O, Puss-in-the-corner! O, Youth!
The Duke was saying something about the time when suburban streets would be two hundred feet wide to make landing places for aeroplanes, and when the human appetite would be regulated by push-buttons ranged along the diaphragm. But I didn't hear a word.
I yearned to be across the street. That was uncomplimentary to company, but nevertheless I yearned. So did all the rest, only they aren't telling about it. When a man has passed into the sere and yellow he has a right to the consolation of retrospect. Frankly, for a moment I wished I didn't have any house. I wanted to be over there where the young folks were, pitching bean-bags. And later, when they gathered around the piano and sang discordantly all the popular songs, I wanted to be there and join my voice in the music. It was awful music, but I wanted to howl right along with the young ones.