All up to and through Labor Day Oliver bluffed and manoeuvered like the
head of a small but vicious Balkan State in an International Congress for
Ted and Elinor, and towards tea-time, decided sardonically that it was
quite time his adopted infants took any further responsibilities off his
shoulders. There was no use delaying conclusions any longer--Oliver felt
as he looked at his victims like a workmanlike god who simply must finish
the rough draft of the particular world he is fussing with before sunset,
in spite of all rebellious or slipshod qualities in its clay. There would
be a dance that evening. There would be, Oliver thought with some
proprietary pride, a large sentimental moon. A few craftily casual words
with Elinor before dinner--a real talk with Ted in one of the
intermissions of the dance--a watchdog efficiency in guarding the two from
intrusion while they got the business over with neatly in any one of
several very suitable spots that Oliver had picked out already in his
mind's eye. And then, having thoroughly settled Ted for the rest of his
years in such a solid and satisfactory way--perhaps the queer gods that
had everyone in charge, in spite of their fatal leaning toward practical-
joking where the literary were concerned, might find enough applause in
their little tin hearts for Oliver's acquired and vicarious merit to give
him in some strange and painful way another chance to be alive again and
not merely the present wandering spectre-of-body that people who knew
nothing about it seemed to take so unreasonably for Oliver Crowe.
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