Think of him ‘phoning me, instead of his wife sitting down and writing us a regular bid!
Well, I guess we’re stuck for it.
That’s the trouble with all this class-brother hooptedoodle.”
He accepted Overbrook’s next plaintive invitation, for an evening two weeks off.
A dinner two weeks off, even a family dinner, never seems so appalling, till the two weeks have astoundingly disappeared and one comes dismayed to the ambushed hour.
They had to change the date, because of their own dinner to the McKelveys, but at last they gloomily drove out to the Overbrooks’ house in Dorchester.
It was miserable from the beginning.
The Overbrooks had dinner at six-thirty, while the Babbitts never dined before seven.
Babbitt permitted himself to be ten minutes late.
“Let’s make it as short as possible.
I think we’ll duck out quick.
I’ll say I have to be at the office extra early to-morrow,” he planned.
The Overbrook house was depressing.
It was the second story of a wooden two-family dwelling; a place of baby-carriages, old hats hung in the hall, cabbage-smell, and a Family Bible on the parlor table.
Ed Overbrook and his wife were as awkward and threadbare as usual, and the other guests were two dreadful families whose names Babbitt never caught and never desired to catch.
But he was touched, and disconcerted, by the tactless way in which Overbrook praised him:
“We’re mighty proud to have old George here to-night!
Of course you’ve all read about his speeches and oratory in the papers—and the boy’s good-looking, too, eh?—but what I always think of is back in college, and what a great old mixer he was, and one of the best swimmers in the class.”
Babbitt tried to be jovial; he worked at it; but he could find nothing to interest him in Overbrook’s timorousness, the blankness of the other guests, or the drained stupidity of Mrs. Overbrook, with her spectacles, drab skin, and tight-drawn hair.
He told his best Irish story, but it sank like soggy cake.
Most bleary moment of all was when Mrs. Overbrook, peering out of her fog of nursing eight children and cooking and scrubbing, tried to be conversational.
“I suppose you go to Chicago and New York right along, Mr. Babbitt,” she prodded.
“Well, I get to Chicago fairly often.”
“It must be awfully interesting.
I suppose you take in all the theaters.”
“Well, to tell the truth, Mrs. Overbrook, thing that hits me best is a great big beefsteak at a Dutch restaurant in the Loop!”
They had nothing more to say.
Babbitt was sorry, but there was no hope; the dinner was a failure.
At ten, rousing out of the stupor of meaningless talk, he said as cheerily as he could, “‘Fraid we got to be starting, Ed.
I’ve got a fellow coming to see me early to-morrow.”
As Overbrook helped him with his coat, Babbitt said, “Nice to rub up on the old days!
We must have lunch together, P.D.Q.”
Mrs. Babbitt sighed, on their drive home,
“It was pretty terrible.
But how Mr. Overbrook does admire you!”
“Yep.
Poor cuss! Seems to think I’m a little tin archangel, and the best-looking man in Zenith.”
“Well, you’re certainly not that but—Oh, Georgie, you don’t suppose we have to invite them to dinner at our house now, do we?”
“Ouch!
Gaw, I hope not!”
“See here, now, George!
You didn’t say anything about it to Mr. Overbrook, did you?”
“No! Gee! No!
Honest, I didn’t!
Just made a bluff about having him to lunch some time.”
“Well.... Oh, dear....
I don’t want to hurt their feelings.
But I don’t see how I could stand another evening like this one.
And suppose somebody like Dr. and Mrs. Angus came in when we had the Overbrooks there, and thought they were friends of ours!”
For a week they worried,