see the trapeze-performance."
Down they went, and, meeting Mr. Ramsay, who was coming up, Job stopped a moment to tell him to take out any of the horses that he fancied. "Take the piebalds," said he, "if you'd like to have a drive, and take some nice girl--Miss Ethel or Bijou Brown--for a two-forty shine."
"Thanks awfully," said Mr. Ramsay. "But I think I had better--that is, I had rather ask Heathcote."
"You are horribly welcome, but I don't think much of your taste," replied Mr. Ketchum, not understanding what a proposition he had made.
In the lower hall they found the eminent divine, irreproachably clerical and dignified, and Captain Kendall, just arrived. Sir Robert, hearing voices, came out, brush in hand, to welcome them, producing quite as great an impression on them as on Mrs. Ketchum. "I belong to the working-classes now. Just you come here and see how the fine arts are prospering in the State of Michigan," said he, and led them into the boudoir, where he nimbly ran up a step-ladder, laid himself out on the scaffolding, and, with a bold, free touch, went on sketching a procession of Cupids which was to go around the base of the small dome, talking all the while with the utmost animation to the guests below. "As soon as I get in this fellow riding a dolphin, I shall be entirely at your service," said he. "No considerations of respect and attachment to the Church or fear of the Army can influence me just now."
The two gentlemen begged that he would go on; the ladies came in, and together they passed an agreeable morning, Sir Robert declaring that on the scaffold he was entitled to benefit of clergy, and begging the eminent divine when he left to let him have his ghostly counsel every day for at least a week. In spite of his eminence, this gentleman had no very great breadth of view. To sit about on boxes and window-seats, picnicking in an empty room, while the stranger upon whom he had come to call lay above him in red pajamas, painting Cupids on the ceiling, was to his mind monstrously indecorous. It was amusing to see the dignified way in which he took the pleasantries of the party; and he made no response to Sir Robert's farewell overture except a bow. "Your guest is a very entertaining man," he said to Mr. Ketchum, who accompanied him to the hat-rack, "but is he quite--quite--you understand?"
"Perfectly so," said Job, with a laugh. "Head and heart both of the best, as you will find out when you know him better. You are coming back to dinner, ain't you, to help us out with the fatted calf?"
The dinner was a very elegant affair of twenty-five covers, given to the guests, the first of a series of entertainments planned in their honor. All the notable people of the neighborhood were represented at it. The scandalized divine returned to partake of it, and, seeing Sir Robert in a dress-suit, dignified, polished, of preternatural respectability, not to say distinction, looking the pillar of Church and State that he was, and talking with due gravity of the tariff, free trade, and the like ponderous subjects, concluded to overlook the mad behavior of the morning, and, joining him, gave him a long account of the Indian Missions of the Church. Unconscious of having done anything that might be regarded as eccentric, Sir Robert was all affability, soon grew interested, asked a number of questions as to the death-rate among the tribes, the prevalence of smallpox and cholera among them, the spread of civilization, confirmed nomadism, traces of Jewish rites, and so on, thanked him for a "very profitable half-hour," and said he should send a little check to be applied in any way he might see fit, obliterating thereby the last trace of the previous prejudice. This, indeed, was replaced by something very like enthusiasm when there came next day a slip of paper representing five hundred dollars, also a note from the donor, saying that he should be glad to know that some portion of the sum enclosed had gone to an industrial school, if any such existed, where the young Indian women could learn to boil a potato properly, and the use of brooms and pails and scrubbing-brushes. "You must first clean them and then convert them: get them into the bath-tub, and you can take them anywhere," said Sir Robert, with great truth and perspicacity.
"One doesn't get such a dinner, except at a few great houses, outside of London or Paris," Mrs. Sykes was pleased to say when it was over. "I have found out that almost everything was ordered from New York; and a pretty penny it must have cost. Not that this man cares. I
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