There was to be a big supper at the Cy Whittaker place that night. It was an impromptu affair, arranged on the spur of the moment by Captain Cy, who, in spite of the lawyer"s protests and anxiety concerning his health, went serenely up and down the main road, inviting everybody he met or could think of. The captain"s face was as radiant as a spring sunrise. His smile, as Asaph said, "pretty nigh cut the upper half of his head off." People who had other engagements, and would, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, have refused the invitation, couldn"t say no to his hearty, "Can"t come? Course you"ll come! Man alive! I WANT you."
"Invalid, is he?" observed Josiah Dimick, after receiving and accepting his own invitation. "Well, I wish to thunder I could be took down with the same kind of disease. I"d be willin" to linger along with it quite a spell if it pumped me as full of joy as Whit seems to be. Don"t give laughin" gas to keep off pneumonia, do they? No? Well, I"d like to know the name of his medicine, that"s all."
Supper was to be ready at six. Georgianna, a.s.sisted by Keturah Bangs, Mrs. Sylva.n.u.s Cahoon, and other volunteers, was gloriously busy in the kitchen. The table in the dining room reached from one end of the big apartment to the other. Guests would begin to arrive shortly. Wily Mr.
Peabody, guessing that Captain Cy might prefer to be alone, had taken the Board of Strategy out riding behind the span.
In the sitting room, around the baseburner stove, were three persons--Captain Cy, Bos"n, and Phoebe. Miss Dawes had "come early," at the captain"s urgent appeal. Now she was sitting in the rocker, at one side of the stove, gazing dreamily at the ruddy light behind the isingla.s.s panes. She looked quietly, blissfully contented and happy.
At her feet, on the braided mat, sat Bos"n, playing with Lonesome, who purred lazily. The little girl was happy, too, for was not her beloved Uncle Cyrus at home again, with all danger of their separation ended forevermore?
As for Captain Cy himself, the radiant expression was still on his face, brighter than ever. He looked across at Phoebe, who smiled back at him.
Then he glanced down at Bos"n. And all at once he realized that this was the fulfillment of his dream. Here was his "picture"; the sitting room was now as he had always loved to think of it--as it used to be. He was in his father"s chair, Phoebe in the one his mother used to occupy, and between them--just where he had sat so often when a boy--the child. The Cy Whittaker place had again, and at last, come into its own.
He drew a long breath, and looked about the room; at the stove, the lamp, the old, familiar furniture, at his grandfather"s portrait over the mantel. Then, in a flash of memory, his father"s words came back to him, and he said, laughing aloud from pure happiness:
"Bos"n, run down cellar and get me a pitcher of cider, won"t you?--there"s a good feller."