________________________________________________
_ After ablutions, he found his wet hair plastic,
and easily obtained the long, even sweep
backward from the brow, lacking which no male
person, unless bald, fulfilled his definition of a
man of the world. But there ensued a period of
vehemence and activity caused by a bent collar-
button, which went on strike with a desperation
that was downright savage. The day was warm
and William was warmer; moisture bedewed him
afresh. Belated victory no sooner arrived than
he perceived a fatal dimpling of the new collar,
and was forced to begin the operation of exchanging
it for a successor. Another exchange, however,
he unfortunately forgot to make: the
handkerchief with which he had wiped the wall
remained in his pocket.
Voices from below, making polite laughter,
warned him that already some of the bidden
party had arrived, and, as he completed the
fastening of his third consecutive collar, an
ecstasy of sound reached him through the open
window--and then, Oh then! his breath behaved
in an abnormal manner and he began to tremble.
It was the voice of Miss Pratt, no less!
He stopped for one heart-struck look from his
casement. All in fluffy white and heliotrope she
was--a blonde rapture floating over the sidewalk
toward William's front gate. Her little white
cottony dog, with a heliotrope ribbon round his
neck, bobbed his head over her cuddling arm; a
heliotrope parasol shielded her infinitesimally
from the amorous sun. Poor William!
Two youths entirely in William's condition of
heart accompanied the glamorous girl and hung
upon her rose-leaf lips, while Miss Parcher
appeared dimly upon the outskirts of the group,
the well-known penalty for hostesses who entertain
such radiance. Probably it serves them right.
To William's reddening ear Miss Pratt's voice
came clearly as the chiming of tiny bells, for she
spoke whimsically to her little dog in that tinkling
childlike fashion which was part of the spell she
cast.
``Darlin' Flopit,'' she said, ``wake up! Oo
tummin' to tea-potty wiz all de drowed-ups.
P'eshus Flopit, wake up!''
Dizzy with enchantment, half suffocated, his
heart melting within him, William turned from
the angelic sounds and fairy vision of the
window. He ran out of the room, and plunged down
the front stairs. And the next moment the crash
of breaking glass and the loud thump-bump of a
heavily falling human body resounded through
the house.
Mrs. Baxter, alarmed, quickly excused herself
from the tea-table, round which were gathered
four or five young people, and hastened to the
front hall, followed by Jane. Through the open
door were seen Miss Pratt, Miss Parcher, Mr.
Johnnie Watson and Mr. Joe Bullitt coming leisurely
up the sunny front walk, laughing and unaware
of the catastrophe which had just occurred
within the shadows of the portal. And at a little
distance from the foot of the stairs William was
seated upon the prostrate ``Battle of Gettysburg.''
``It slid,'' he said, hoarsely. ``I carried it
upstairs with me''--he believed this--``and somebody
brought it down and left it lying flat on
the floor by the bottom step on purpose to trip
me! I stepped on it and it slid.'' He was in a
state of shock: it seemed important to impress
upon his mother the fact that the picture had
not remained firmly in place when he stepped
upon it. ``It SLID, I tell you!''
``Get up, Willie!'' she urged, under her breath,
and as he summoned enough presence of mind to
obey, she beheld ruins other than the wrecked
engraving. She stifled a cry. ``WILLIE! Did the
glass cut you?''
He felt himself. ``No'm.''
``It did your trousers! You'll have to change
them. Hurry!''
Some of William's normal faculties were
restored to him by one hasty glance at the back of
his left leg, which had a dismantled appearance.
A long blue strip of cloth hung there, with white
showing underneath.
``HURRY!'' said Mrs. Baxter. And hastily gathering
some fragments of glass, she dropped them
upon the engraving, pushed it out of the way,
and went forward to greet Miss Pratt and her
attendants.
As for William, he did not even pause to close
his mouth, but fled with it open. Upward he
sped, unseen, and came to a breathless halt upon
the landing at the top of the stairs.
As it were in a dream he heard his mother's
hospitable greetings at the door, and then the
little party lingered in the hall, detained by Miss
Pratt's discovery of Jane.
``Oh, tweetums tootums ickle dirl!'' he heard
the ravishing voice exclaim. ``Oh, tootums ickle
blue sash!''
``It cost a dollar and eighty-nine cents,'' said
Jane. ``Willie sat on the cakes.''
``Oh no, he didn't,'' Mrs. Baxter laughed. ``He
didn't QUITE!''
``He had to go up-stairs,'' said Jane. And as
the stricken listener above smote his forehead,
she added placidly, ``He tore a hole in his
clo'es.''
She seemed about to furnish details, her mood
being communicative, but Mrs. Baxter led the
way into the ``living-room''; the hall was vacated,
and only the murmur of voices and laughter
reached William. What descriptive information
Jane may have added was spared his hearing,
which was a mercy.
And yet it may be that he could not have felt
worse than he did; for there IS nothing worse than
to be seventeen and to hear one of the Noblest
girls in the world told by a little child that you
sat on the cakes and tore a hole in your clo'es.
William leaned upon the banister railing and
thought thoughts about Jane. For several long,
seething moments he thought of her exclusively.
Then, spurred by the loud laughter of rivals and
the agony of knowing that even in his own
house they were monopolizing the attention of
one of the Noblest, he hastened into his own,
room and took account of his reverses.
Standing with his back to the mirror, he
obtained over his shoulder a view of his trousers
which caused him to break out in a fresh
perspiration. Again he wiped his forehead with the
handkerchief, and the result was instantly visible
in the mirror.
The air thickened with sounds of frenzy, followed
by a torrential roar and great sputterings
in a bath-room, which tumult subsiding, William
returned at a tragic gallop to his room and, having
removed his trousers, began a feverish examination
of the garments hanging in a clothes-
closet. There were two pairs of flannel trousers
which would probably again be white and possible,
when cleaned and pressed, but a glance
showed that until then they were not to be
considered as even the last resort of desperation.
Beside them hung his ``last year's summer suit''
of light gray.
Feverishly he brought it forth, threw off his
coat, and then--deflected by another glance at
the mirror--began to change his collar again.
This was obviously necessary, and to quicken
the process he decided to straighten the bent
collar-button. Using a shoe-horn as a lever, he
succeeded in bringing the little cap or head of the
button into its proper plane, but, unfortunately,
his final effort dislodged the cap from the rod
between it and the base, and it flew off
malignantly into space. Here was a calamity; few
things are more useless than a decapitated collar-
button, and William had no other. He had made
sure that it was his last before he put it on, that
day; also he had ascertained that there was none
in, on, or about his father's dressing-table.
Finally, in the possession of neither William nor
his father was there a shirt with an indigenous
collar.
For decades, collar-buttons have been on the
hand-me-down shelves of humor; it is a mistake
in the catalogue. They belong to pathos. They
have done harm in the world, and there have
been collar-buttons that failed when the destinies
of families hung upon them. There have been
collar-buttons that thwarted proper matings.
There have been collar-buttons that bore last
hopes, and, falling to the floor, NEVER were found!
William's broken collar-button was really the
only collar-button in the house, except such as
were engaged in serving his male guests below.
At first he did not realize the extent of his
misfortune. How could he? Fate is always
expected to deal its great blows in the grand
manner. But our expectations are fustian
spangled with pinchbeck; we look for tragedy
to be theatrical. Meanwhile, every day before
our eyes, fate works on, employing for its
instruments the infinitesimal, the ignoble and the
petty--in a word, collar-buttons.
Of course William searched his dressing-
table and his father's, although he had been
thoroughly over both once before that day. Next
he went through most of his mother's and Jane's
accessories to the toilette; through trinket-boxes,
glove-boxes, hairpin-boxes, handkerchief-cases--
even through sewing-baskets. Utterly he
convinced himself that ladies not only use no collar-
buttons, but also never pick them up and put
them away among their own belongings. How
much time he consumed in this search is difficult
to reckon;--it is almost impossible to believe
that there is absolutely no collar-button in a
house.
And what William's state of mind had become
is matter for exorbitant conjecture. Jane,
arriving at his locked door upon an errand, was
bidden by a thick, unnatural voice to depart.
``Mamma says, `What in mercy's name is the
matter?' '' Jane called. ``She whispered to me,
`Go an' see what in mercy's name is the matter
with Willie; an' if the glass cut him, after all; an'
why don't he come down'; an' why don't you,
Willie? We're all havin' the nicest time!''
``You g'way!'' said the strange voice within
the room. ``G'way!''
``Well, did the glass cut you?''
``No! Keep quiet! G'way!''
``Well, are you EVER comin' down to your
party?''
``Yes, I am! G'way!''
Jane obeyed, and William somehow completed
the task upon which he was engaged. Genius
had burst forth from his despair; necessity had
become a mother again, and William's collar was
in place. It was tied there. Under his necktie
was a piece of string.
He had lost count of time, but he was frantically
aware of its passage; agony was in the
thought of so many rich moments frittered away;
up-stairs, while Joe Bullitt and Johnnie Watson
made hay below. And there was another spur
to haste in his fear that the behavior of Mrs.
Baxter might not be all that the guest of honor
would naturally expect of William's mother.
As for Jane, his mind filled with dread; shivers
passed over him at intervals.
It was a dismal thing to appear at a ``party''
(and that his own) in ``last summer's suit,'' but
when he had hastily put it on and faced the
mirror, he felt a little better--for three or four
seconds. Then he turned to see how the back of
it looked.
And collapsed in a chair, moaning. _
Read next: CHAPTER XIV. TIME DOES FLY
Read previous: CHAPTER XII. PROGRESS OF THE SYMPTOMS
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