"I ain"t Demetrius! I"m Pythagoras."
"It makes no difference. Go and get it and don"t speak to me again tonight."
The boy had already s.n.a.t.c.hed the coin, and he now started for the exit, but his outgoing way was instantly blocked by a promiscuous pack of pugilistic Polydores, and an ardent and general onslaught followed.
I endeavored to untangle the arms and legs of the attackers and the attacked in a desire to rescue the youngest, a child of two, but I soon beat a retreat, having no mind to become a punching bag for Polydores.
The concentrator at the writing table, looking up vaguely, perceived the general joust.
"How provoking!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I was in search of an antonym and now they"ve driven it out of my memory."
I politely offered my sympathy for her loss.
"Did you ever see such misbehaved children?" she asked casually and impersonally as she calmly surveyed the free-for-all fight.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Dr. Felix Polydore]
"Children always misbehave before company," I remarked propitiatingly.
"Of course they know better."
"Why no, they don"t!" she declared, looking at me in surprise, "they----"
At this instant the errant antonym evidently flashed upon her mental vision and her pencil hastened to record it and then flew on at lightning speed.
I was about to try to make an escape when a momentary cessation of hostilities was caused by the entrance of a moth-eaten, abstracted-looking man. As the _two-year-old_ hailed him as "fadder", I gathered that he was the person responsible for the family now fighting at his feet.
"What"s the trouble?" he asked helplessly.
"She gave Thag a nickel," explained the eldest boy, "and we want it."
The man drew a sigh of relief. The solution of this family problem was instantly and satisfactorily met by an impartial distribution of nickels.
With demoniac whoops of delight, the contestants fled from the room.
I introduced myself to the man of the house, who seemed to realize that some sort of compulsory conventionalities must be observed. He looked hopelessly at his wife, and seeing that she was beyond response to an S O S call to things mundane, he frankly but impressively informed me that I must expect nothing of them socially as their lives were devoted to research and study. The children, however, he a.s.sured me, could run over frequently to see us.
I instinctively felt that my call was considered ended, so I took my departure. I related the details of my neighborly visit to Silvia, but her sense of humor was not stirred. It was entirely dominated by her dread of the young Polydores.
"How many children are there?" she asked faintly. "More than the five you said you counted that first day?"
"They seemed not so many as much. That is, though I suppose in round numbers there are but five, yet each of those five is equal to at least three ordinary children."
"Are they all boys? Huldah says the youngest wears dresses."
"Nevertheless he is a boy. They are all unmistakably boys. I think they must have been born with boots on and," conscious of the imprints of my shins, "hobnail boots at that. Even the youngest, a two-year old, seems to have been graduated from Home Rule."
"I can"t bear to think of their going to bed hungry," she said wistfully. "Think of that unnatural mother expecting them to satisfy their hunger by popcorn."
"They didn"t though," I a.s.sured her. "I saw them stop a street vender below here and invest their nickels in hot dogs."
"Hot dogs!" repeated Silvia in horror.
"Wienerwursts," I hastened to interpret.
CHAPTER III
_In Which We Are Pestered by Polydores_
Our life now became one long round of Polydores. They were with us burr-tight, and attached themselves to me with dog-like devotion, remaining utterly impervious to Silvia"s aloofness and repulses. At last, however, she succ.u.mbed to their presence as one of the things inevitable.
"The Polydores are here to stay," she acknowledged in a calmness-of-despair voice.
"They don"t seem to be homebodies," I allowed.
The children were not literary like the other productions of their profound parents, but were a band of robust, active youngsters unburdened with brains, excepting Ptolemy of soup plate fame. Not that he betrayed any tendencies toward a learned line, but he was possessed of an occult, uncanny, wizard-like wisdom that was disconcerting. His contemplative eyes seemed to search my soul and read my inmost thoughts.
Pythagoras, Emerald, and Demetrius, aged respectively nine, eight, and seven, were very much alike in looks and size, being so many pinched caricatures of their mother. To Silvia they were bewildering whirlwinds, but Huldah, who seemed to have difficulty in telling them apart, always cla.s.sified them as "Them three", and Silvia and I fell into the habit of referring to them in the same way. Huldah could not master the Polydore given names either by memory or p.r.o.nunciation.
Ptolemy, whose name was shortened to "Tolly" by Diogenes, she called "Polly." When she was on speaking terms with "Them three" she nicknamed them "Thaggy, Emmy, and Meetie."
Diogenes, the two-year old, was a Tartar when emulating his brothers.
Alone, he was sometimes normal and a shade more like ordinary children.
When they first began swarming in upon us, Silvia drew many lines which, however, the Polydores promptly effaced.
"They shall not eat here, anyway," she emphatically declared.
This was her last stand and she went down ingloriously.
One day while we were seated at the table enjoying some of Huldah"s most palatable dishes, Ptolemy came in. There ensued on our part a silence which the lad made no effort to break. Silvia and I each slipped him a side glance. He stood statuesque, watching us with the mute wistfulness of a hungry animal. There were unwonted small red specks high upon his cheekbones, symptoms, Silvia thought, of starvation.
She was moved to ask, though reluctantly and perfunctorily:
"Haven"t you been to dinner, Ptolemy?"
"Yes," he admitted quickly, "but I could eat another."
a.s.suming that the forced inquiry was an invitation, before protest could be entered he supplied himself with a plate and helped himself to food. His need and relish of the meal weakened Silvia"s fortifications.
This opening, of course, was the wedge that let in other Polydores, and thereafter we seldom sat down to a meal without the presence of one or more members of the ill.u.s.trious and famished family, who made themselves as entirely at home as would a troop of foraging soldiers.
Silvia gazed upon their devouring of food with the same surprised, shocked, and yet interested manner in which one watches the feeding of animals.
"I suppose he ought not to eat so many pickles," she remarked one day, as Emerald consumed his ninth Dill.
"You can"t kill a Polydore," I a.s.sured her.