“Oh! Thanks!” they condescended.
He sought his wife, in the pantry, and exploded, “I’d
like to go in there and throw some of those young
pups out of the house! They talk down to me like
I was the butler! I’d like to—”
“I know,” she sighed; “only everybody
says, all the mothers tell me, unless you stand for
them, if you get angry because they go out to their
cars to have a drink, they won’t come to your
house any more, and we wouldn’t want Ted left
out of things, would we?”
He announced that he would be enchanted to have Ted
left out of things, and hurried in to be polite, lest
Ted be left out of things.
But, he resolved, if he found that the boys were drinking,
he would—well, he’d “hand ’em
something that would surprise ’em.”
While he was trying to be agreeable to large-shouldered
young bullies he was earnestly sniffing at them Twice
he caught the reek of prohibition-time whisky, but
then, it was only twice—
Dr. Howard Littlefield lumbered in.
He had come, in a mood of solemn parental patronage,
to look on. Ted and Eunice were dancing, moving
together like one body. Littlefield gasped.
He called Eunice. There was a whispered duologue,
and Littlefield explained to Babbitt that Eunice’s
mother had a headache and needed her. She went
off in tears. Babbitt looked after them furiously.
“That little devil! Getting Ted into trouble!
And Littlefield, the conceited old gas-bag, acting
like it was Ted that was the bad influence!”
Later he smelled whisky on Ted’s breath.
After the civil farewell to the guests, the row was
terrific, a thorough Family Scene, like an avalanche,
devastating and without reticences. Babbitt thundered,
Mrs. Babbitt wept, Ted was unconvincingly defiant,
and Verona in confusion as to whose side she was taking.
For several months there was coolness between the
Babbitts and the Littlefields, each family sheltering
their lamb from the wolf-cub next door. Babbitt
and Littlefield still spoke in pontifical periods about
motors and the senate, but they kept bleakly away from
mention of their families. Whenever Eunice came
to the house she discussed with pleasant intimacy
the fact that she had been forbidden to come to the
house; and Babbitt tried, with no success whatever,
to be fatherly and advisory with her.
“Gosh all fishhooks!” Ted wailed to Eunice,
as they wolfed hot chocolate, lumps of nougat, and
an assortment of glace nuts, in the mosaic splendor
of the Royal Drug Store, “it gets me why Dad
doesn’t just pass out from being so poky.
Every evening he sits there, about half-asleep, and
if Rone or I say, ‘Oh, come on, let’s do
something,’ he doesn’t even take the trouble
to think about it. He just yawns and says, ‘Naw,
this suits me right here.’ He doesn’t
know there’s any fun going on anywhere.
I suppose he must do some thinking, same as you and
I do, but gosh, there’s no way of telling it.
I don’t believe that outside of the office and
playing a little bum golf on Saturday he knows there’s
anything in the world to do except just keep sitting
there-sitting there every night—not wanting
to go anywhere—not wanting to do anything—thinking
us kids are crazy—sitting there—Lord!”
