Minerva's Manoeuvres: The Cheerful Facts of a "Return to Nature"Loomis, Charles Battell
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Minerva's Manoeuvres: The Cheerful Facts of a "Return to Nature"
Loomis, Charles Battell
Country life -- Fiction; Household employees -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Married people -- Fiction; New England -- Fiction
“Oh, I always get inoculated as soon as I come to this kind of
country. I was born on prairie country and I never saw a hill
until I was eighteen, and then I wondered how I had lived
without ’em.” He turned ’way round. “Pity you don’t paint,
Benedict.”
Benedict, on the back seat, said, “Oh, I don’t have to _do_
anything to enjoy this. Just to be alive is enough in air like
this. Isn’t it, Alice?”
And Alice agreed with him and the horses bore us higher and
higher, slower and slower, and at last we arrived and Ellery and
Cherry greeted us.
James came out to relieve the guests of their suit cases and I
invited all hands to go to their rooms and remove the evidences
of their smoky ride.
When Ethel and Madge had come down from our room I said to
Ethel,
“No dressing, I suppose?”
“No, I suppose not,” said she, and there was a little note of
regret in her voice.
I went up and washed and put on a cutaway and in a few minutes I
came down and walked back and forth on the veranda.
In about a quarter of an hour the three men who were using
Ellery’s chamber as a dressing room came down the front stairs.
I caught a glimpse of them and lo, two were in Tuxedos, and
Hepburn was in full evening clothes.
Quick as a wink, and before they saw me, I whisked around to the
back of the house, and finding Ethel in the kitchen, where she
was superintending some salad arrangement, I said,
“They’re all dressed. Me to _my_ evening clothes.”
“Good,” said she.
I saw Ellery within calling distance. He was in a sack coat. I
hailed him and he came up.
“Don’t want to make ’em feel foolish. They’re all dressed. Run
up and put on your Tuxedo or whatever you have. Come into my
room to dress and we can help each other.”
He got his clothes and we hastened to my room, where we made as
quick changes as we could.
“Funny about Ethel,” said I. “She likes simplicity, but she also
likes evening clothes. Says a man looks better. I won’t wear a
Tuxedo and look like a bob-tailed cat, so I’ve got to go the
whole thing. When she sees five immaculate shirt fronts she’ll
be just about happy.”
“Well, it does look nice,” said Ellery.
“Oh, I don’t mind once I’m in them.”
At last we were ready all but our ties, and none too soon, for
we heard Ethel come into the front hall and say, “Dinner’s
ready. Where are the men?”
And then Madge said, “Oh, they had to run up stairs at the last
minute to get something. Here they come.”
Ethel called up to me, “Hurry down, dear. We’ll go in
informally.”
“That’s right. We’ll be right down,” said I.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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