The Shoulders of Atlas | Page 3

over and Sylvia were setting the table in the other room in
his honor. He opened the door which led directly into the shop. Sylvia,
a pathetic, slim, elderly figure in rusty black, was bending over the
stove, frying flapjacks. "Has he come home?" whispered Henry.
"No, it's Mr. Meeks. I asked him to stay to supper. I told him I would
make some flapjacks, and he acted tickled to death. He doesn't get a
decent thing to eat once in a dog's age. Hurry and get washed. The
flapjacks are about done, and I don't want them to get cold."

Henry's face, which had fallen a little when he learned that Horace had
not returned, still looked brighter than before. While Sidney Meeks
never let him have the last word, yet he was much better than Sylvia as
a safety-valve for pessimism. Meeks was as pessimistic in his way as
Henry, although he handled his pessimism, as he did everything else,
with diplomacy, and the other man had a secret conviction that when he
seemed to be on the opposite side yet he was in reality pulling with the
lawyer.
Sidney Meeks was older than Henry, and as unsuccessful as a country
lawyer can well be. He lived by himself; he had never married; and the
world, although he smiled at it facetiously, was not a pleasant place in
his eyes.
Henry, after he had washed himself at the sink in the shop, entered the
kitchen, where the table was set, and passed through to the sitting-room,
where the lawyer was. Sidney Meeks did not rise. He extended one
large, white hand affably. "How are you Henry?" said he, giving the
other man's lean, brown fingers a hard shake. "I dropped in here on my
way home from the post-office, and your wife tempted me with
flapjacks in a lordly dish, and I am about to eat."
"Glad to see you," returned Henry.
"You get home early, or it seems early, now the days are getting so
long," said Meeks, as Henry sat down opposite.
"Yes, it's early enough, but I don't get any more pay."
Meeks laughed. "Henry, you are the direct outcome of your day and
generation," said he. "Less time, and more pay for less time, is our
slogan."
"Well, why not?" returned Henry, surlily, still with a dawn of delighted
opposition in his thin, intelligent face. "Why not? Look at the money
that's spent all around us on other things that correspond. What's an
automobile but less time and more money, eh?"

Meeks laughed. "Give it up until after supper, Henry," he said, as
Sylvia's thin, sweet voice was heard from the next room.
"If you men don't stop talking and come right out, these flapjacks will
be spoiled!" she cried. The men arose and obeyed her call. "There are
compensations for everything," said Meeks, laughing, as he settled
down heavily into his chair. He was a large man. "Flapjacks are
compensations. Let us eat our compensations and be thankful. That's
my way of saying grace. You ought always to say grace, Henry, when
you have such a good cook as your wife is to get meals for you. If you
had to shift for yourself, the way I do, you'd feel that it was a simple act
of decency."
"I don't see much to say grace for," said Henry, with a disagreeable
sneer.
"Oh, Henry!" said Sylvia.
"For compensations in the form of flapjacks, with plenty of butter and
sugar and nutmeg," said Meeks. "These are fine, Mrs. Whitman."
"A good thick beefsteak at twenty-eight cents a pound, regulated by the
beef trust, would be more to my liking after a hard day's work," said
Henry.
Sylvia exclaimed again, but she was not in reality disturbed. She was
quite well aware that her husband was enjoying himself after his own
peculiar fashion, and that, if he spoke the truth, the flapjacks were more
to his New England taste for supper than thick beefsteak.
"Well, wait until after supper, and maybe you will change your mind
about having something to say grace for," Meeks said, mysteriously.
The husband and wife stared at him. "What do you mean, Mr. Meeks?"
asked Sylvia, a little nervously. Something in the lawyer's manner
agitated her. She was not accustomed to mysteries. Life had not held
many for her, especially of late years.

Henry took another mouthful of flapjacks. "Well, if you can give me
any good reason for saying grace you will do more than the parson ever
has," he said.
"Oh, Henry!" said Sylvia.
"It's the truth," said Henry. "I've gone to meeting and heard how
thankful I ought to be for things I haven't got, and things I have got that
other folks haven't, and for forgiveness for breaking commandments,