The Return of Peter Grimm Part 3

"I came over," went on Frederik, by hard mental calisthenics creating an impromptu suggestion, "to propose that we insert a full-page cut of your new tulip in our midsummer floral almanac."

"H'--m!" muttered Grimm doubtfully. "I don't see why we----"

"Oh, sir, the public's expecting it."

"What makes you think so?"

"Why," now quite at home with his newly evolved notion, "you've no idea the stir the tulip has made. We get letters from everywhere----"

"It didn't seem to me anything so extraordinary," said Grimm modestly, albeit hugely gratified. "I'll think over the plan. What have you been doing all day?"

Frederik glanced at the clock. It registered three minutes before nine.

"Oh, I've had a busy morning," he answered. "In the packing house. Lots of orders to attend to. It's never safe to trust the more important ones to subordinates."

"That's right," approved Grimm. "Fritzy, it does me good, all through, to see you taking hold of the business the way you're doing."

Further praise was cut short by old Marta, the housekeeper, who bustled in to attend to her regular nine o'clock duty of winding the chain-weighted Dutch clock.

As she drew up the weights with a grate and a whirr that made audible conversation quite out of the question, she formed a study, in clothes and visage, that might have stepped direct from a Franz Hals canvas.

There was nothing American or modern about the old woman. Nothing about her save her face had changed since the day, sixty years back, when an earlier Grimm, returning from a visit from the Fatherland, had brought her to Grimm Manor as maid for his young American wife. Her task accomplished, Marta turned dutifully to courtesy to her master.

"_Huge moroche, Mynheer Grimm_," she saluted him. "_Komt ujuist eut di teum?_"

"_Ja_," replied Peter, dropping into the tongue of his fathers, yet with an odd twinkle in his little eyes. "_En ik bin hongerig._--Taking her morning exercise," he added, noting the performance with the clock weights.

"You are always making fun of me!" sniffed Marta, trying not to grin as she swept indignantly out of the room.

In her departure she nearly collided with Hartmann who was entering from the offices. Seating himself at the desk, dictation pad in hand, Hartmann asked:

"Are you ready for me, sir?"

"Yes," answered Grimm.--"No, I'm not. But I will be in a minute. There's something I'd forgotten. Wait----"

Cupping his hands about his mouth, Grimm wheeled to face the gallery and shouted a curiously high-pitched dissyllable:

"_Ou--hoo!_"

And, as though a sweeter, more silvery echo of the rough old voice, came from one of the gallery rooms an answering hail. Kathrien herself followed close upon her reply to the familiar signal call.

"Oh, Oom Peter!" she exclaimed, running lightly down the stairs and throwing her arms about his neck. "Good-morning. How careless I was not to come sooner and make your coffee. I didn't know you were in yet. You must be half starved."

She started for the dining-room. But Grimm's arm was about her waist, detaining her.

"This is the very busiest little woman you ever saw, Frederik," he announced. "She is forever thinking of things to do for me. And I'm never remembering to do anything for her."

"Shame!" cried Kathrien, "you do everything in this big world for me, Oom Peter, and you know it. I've got everything any girl's heart could ask."

"Oh, no, you haven't though," sagely contradicted Grimm. "Before you say that, wait till I give you some fine young chap for a husband. Hey, Frederik?"

She drew away from his embrace with gentle impatience.

"Don't, Oom Peter," she begged. "You're always talking about weddings lately. I don't know what's come over you."

"It's nesting time," Grimm defended himself. "Weddings are in the air.

And then, I keep thinking of all the linen packed in my grandmother's chest upstairs. We must use it again some day. There, there, little girl! You shan't be teased any more. Only, I'll leave it to you, Fritzy, if she doesn't deserve a grand husband,--this little girl of mine. If for no other reason, to pay for all she's done for me."

"Done for you?" laughed Kathrien. "Truly, I was forgetting that. I do you the great favour of letting you do everything for me."

"Nonsense! Who lays out my linen and brushes my clothes and fixes wonderful little dishes for me, and puts my slippers and dressing gown in front of the fire on cold nights, and puts flowers on my desk every day? And, best of all, _Kindchen_, who floods this old house of mine with the glory of Youth?"

"Youth?" she mocked with the true scorn of the young for their supreme gift. "Youth can't do very much. What does it amount to?"

"Nothing much," gravely answered her uncle. "Youth, as you say, is not anything worth mentioning. It is only the most priceless and most perishable treasure in G.o.d's storehouse. It is only the thing that means Beauty and Strength and Hope. It is the thing we all despise as long as we have it and would give our souls to get back as soon as we have lost it. No, as you say, Youth doesn't amount to much. It is only the nearest approach to Immortality that mortals have ever known. Why, where should I be now,--a grouchy old bachelor like me--without Youth in my house?

Why, Frederik, this girl has made me feel kindlier toward all other women."

"Oh, I have, have I?" demanded Kathrien, "that's more than I bargained for."

"Don't flatter yourself," he joked. "It's only the way one feels about a pet. One likes all the rest of the breed."

"That's true," broke in Hartmann, throwing himself into the conversation on impulse. "It's so. A man studies one girl and then presently he begins to notice the same little traits in them all. It makes one feel differently toward the rest of them."

He glanced shamefacedly back at his dictation pad as the others turned and stared at him in astonishment. But not before he had noted the shy smile that crept over Kathrien's face or the unpleasant glint in Frederik's pale eyes.

Hartmann so seldom took part in general conversation and was so reticent concerning every phase of sentiment, that Grimm was for the moment almost as astounded as though one of his own bulbs had burst into speech.

"An expert opinion," commented Frederik sneeringly. "And from a confirmed bachelor like James!"

"A confirmed bachelor?" Grimm innocently caught up the slur. "What a life! I know. I have been one ever since I can remember. When a bachelor wants to order a three-rib standing roast, who is to eat it? Why, I never had the right sort of a roast on my table until Katje came into the family. And now that you're here too, Fritzy, the roasts get bigger.

But not big enough, even yet. Oh, we must find the husband for----"

"Oom Peter!" protested Kathrien. "You promised you wouldn't tease----"

"Tease?" repeated Grimm, as though he heard the word for the first time.

"Why, how could you have imagined such a thing, child? I was only telling Frederik about the sort of roasts I like on my table. And speaking of tables, Fritzy, I like a nice long table with plenty of young people at it. And myself at the head, carving and carving, and seeing the plates pa.s.sed round and round and round;--getting them back and back and back--There, there, Katje! They shan't tease you. We'll keep the table just as it is. For you and Fritz and me. A nice little circle. All in the family."

The telephone bell set up a purring. Hartmann picked up the receiver.

"h.e.l.lo," he called. "Yes, this is Mr. Grimm's house.--Yes.--Wait one moment, please."

He put his palm over the transmitter and turned to Grimm.

"It's Hicks again, sir," he reported. "He wants to talk more with you about buying the business."

"Buying the business, hey?" snorted Grimm in sudden rage. "No! No! I've told him ten million times it's not on the market and never will be.

Tell him so again."