Our Next-Door Neighbors Part 5

"We can easily ascertain to what point their baggage was checked," I remarked, again essaying to maintain a role of good cheer.

But the pessimistic Ptolemy was right there with another of his gloom-casting retaliations.

"They only took suit-cases and they always keep them in the car.

Here's a check father said to give you to pay for our board. He said you could write in any amount you wanted to."

"He got a lot of dough yesterday," informed Pythagoras, "and he put half of it in the bank here."

Ptolemy handed over a check which was blank except for Felix Polydore's signature.

"I don't see," I weakly exclaimed when my wife had closed the kitchen door, "why she put them off on _us_. Why didn't she trade her brats off for antiques?"

Silvia eyed the check wistfully. I could read the unspoken thought that here, perhaps, was the opportunity for our much-desired trip.

"No, Silvia," I answered quickly, "not for any number of blank checks or vacation trips shall you have the care and annoyance of those wild Comanches."

"I know what I'll do!" she exclaimed suddenly. "I'll go right down to the intelligence office and get anything in the shape of a maid and put her in charge of the Polydore caravansary with double wages and every night out and any other privileges she requests."

This seemed a sane and sensible arrangement, and I wended my way to my office feeling that we were out of the woods.

When I returned home at noon, I found that we had only exchanged the woods for water--and deep water at that.

I beheld a strange sight. Silvia sat by our bedroom window twittering soft, cooing nonsensical nothings to Diogenes, who was clasped in her arms, his flushed little face pressed close to her shoulder.

"He's been quite ill, Lucien. I was frightened and called the doctor.

He said it was only the slight fever that children are subject to. He thought with good care that he'd be all right in a few days."

"Did you succeed in getting a cook to go to the Polydores?" I asked anxiously. "You'll need a nurse to go there, too, to take care of Diogenes."

She looked at me reproachfully and rebukingly.

"Why, Lucien! You don't suppose I could send this sick baby back to that uninviting house with only hired help in charge! Besides, I don't believe he'd stay with a stranger. He seems to have taken a fancy to me."

Diogenes confirmed this belief by a languid lifting of his eyelids, as he feelingly patted her cheek with his baby fingers.

I forebore to suggest that the fancy seemed to be mutual. Diogenes, sick, was no longer an "imp of the devil", but a normal, appealing little child. It occurred to me that possibly the care of a sick Polydore might develop Silvia's tiny germ of child-ken.

"Keep him here of course," I agreed, "but--the other children must return home."

"Diogenes would miss them," she said quickly, "and the doctor says his whims must be humored while he is sick. He is almost asleep now. I think he will let me put him down in his own little bed. Ptolemy brought it over here. Pull back the covers for me, Lucien. There!"

Diogenes half opened his eyes, as she laid him in the bed and smiled wanly.

"Mudder!" he cooed.

Silvia flushed and looked as if she dreaded some expression of mirth from me. Relieved by my silence and a suggestion of moisture in the region of my eyes--the day was quite warm--she confessed:

"He has called me that all the morning."

"It would be a wise Polydore that knows its own parents," I observed.

The slight illness of Diogenes lasted three or four days. I still shudder to recall the memory of that hideous period. Silvia's time and attention were devoted to the sick child. Huldah was putting in all her leisure moments at the dentist's, where she was acquiring her third set of teeth, and joy rode unconfined and unrestrained with our "boarders."

Polydore proclivities made the Reign of Terror formerly known as the French Revolution seem like an ice cream festival. I don't regard myself as a particularly nervous man, but there's a limit! Their war whoops and screeches got on my nerves and temper to the extent of sending me into their midst one evening brandishing a whip and commanding immediate silence. I got it. Not through fear of chastis.e.m.e.nt, for fear was an emotion unknown to a Polydore, but from astonishment at so unexpected a procedure from so unexpected a source.

Heretofore I had either ignored them or frolicked with them. Before they had recovered from their shock, Silvia appeared on the scene.

"Diogenes," she informed them, "was not used to such unwonted quiet, and was fretting at the unaccustomed stillness. Would the boys please play Indian or some of their games again?"

The boys would. I backed from the room, the whip behind me, carefully kept without Silvia's angle of vision. Before Ptolemy resumed his role of chief, he bestowed a knowing and maddening wink upon me.

I wished that we had remained neighbor-less. I wished that the aborigines would scalp Felix Polydore and the writer of Modern Antiquities. Then we could land their brats on the Probate Court. I wished that this were the reign of Herod. I vowed I would backslide from the Presbyterian faith since it no longer included in its articles of belief the eternal d.a.m.nation of infants. How long, O Catiline, would--

A paralyzing suspicion flashed into the maelstrom of my vituperative maledictions. I rushed wildly upstairs to our combination bedroom, sickroom, and nursery, where Silvia sat like a guardian angel beside the Polydore patient.

"Silvia," I shouted excitedly, "do you suppose those diabolical Polydore parents purposely played this trick on us? Was it a premeditated Polydore plan to abandon their young? And can you blame them for playing us for easy marks? Could any parents, Polydore, or otherwise, ever come back to such fiends as these?"

"Hush!" she cautioned, without so much as a glance in my direction.

"You'll wake Diogenes!"

Wake Diogenes! Ye G.o.ds! And she had also implored the brothers of Diogenes to continue their anvil chorus! This took the last st.i.tch of starch from my manly bosom. Spiritless and spineless I bore all things, believed all things--but hoped for nothing.

CHAPTER V

_In Which We Take a Vacation_

Diogenes finally convalesced to his former state of ruggedness and obstreperousness. He continued, however, to cling to Silvia and to call her "mudder." To my amus.e.m.e.nt the other children followed suit and she was now "muddered" by all the Polydores.

"I am glad," I remarked, "that they scorn to include me in their adoption. I wouldn't fancy being 'faddered' by the Polydores."

"You won't be," Ptolemy, appearing seemingly from nowhere, a.s.sured me.

"We've named you stepdaddy."

"If it be possible, Silvia," I implored, "let this cup pa.s.s from me."

"I am going down to the intelligence office today," replied Silvia soothingly. "Diogenes is well enough to go home now, and I can run over there every evening and see that he is properly put to bed."

I went down town feeling like a mule relieved of his pack.

When I came home that afternoon, I found Silvia sitting on the shaded porch serenely sewing. A Sabbath-like stillness pervaded. Not a Polydore in sight or sound.

"Oh!" I cried buoyantly. "The Polydores have been returned to their home station!"

"No," she replied calmly. "They told me at the intelligence office that it would be absolutely impossible to persuade, bribe, or hire a servant to a.s.sume the charge of the Polydore place."

"I suppose," I said glumly, "that Gladys gave the job a double cross.