head of the
table. He is just the man for such a place, and he ought to have it,
too, for another reason. You ought to know that this dinner is really
given to you in your honor. To be sure, Rectus is a good
fellow--splendid--and does everything that he knows how; but my wife and
I know that we owe all our present happiness to your exertions and good
sense."

He went on in this way for some time, and although I tried to stop him,
I couldn't do it.

"Therefore," he continued, "I want your father to preside, and all of
you to be happy, without a suspicion of a cloud about you. At any rate,
I shall be no cloud. Come around here early, and see that everything is
all right. Now I must be off."

And away he went.

I did not like this state of affairs at all. I would have much preferred
to have no dinner. It was not necessary, any way. If I had had the
authority, I would have stopped the whole thing. But it was Uncle
Chipperton's affair, he paid for it, and I had no right to interfere
with it.

My father liked the matter even less than I did. He said it was a
strange and unwarrantable performance on the part of Chipperton, and he
did not understand it. And he certainly did not want to sit at the head
of the table in another man's place. I could not say anything to him to
make him feel better about it. I made him feel worse, indeed, when I
told him that Uncle Chipperton did not want his absence explained, or
alluded to, any more than could be helped. My father hated to have to
keep a secret of this kind.

In the afternoon, I went around to the hotel where the Chippertons
always staid, when they were in New York, to see Corny and her mother. I
found them rather blue. Uncle Chipperton had not been able to keep his
plan from them, and they thought it was dreadful. I could not help
letting them see that I did not like it, and so we didn't have as lively
a time as we ought to have had.

I supposed that if I went to see Rectus, and told him about the matter,
I should make him blue, too. But, as I had no right to tell him, and
also felt a pretty strong desire that some of the folks should come
with good spirits and appetites, I kept away from him. He would have
been sure to see that something was the matter.

I was the first person to appear in the dining-room of the restaurant
where the dinner-table was spread for us. It was a prettily furnished
parlor in the second story of the house, and the table was very
tastefully ar