Guestward Ho! Read Online Free PDF Page B

dress in the Western mode.
    So after my first good laugh, at poor Bill's expense, I decided to dry my tears, tuck up my hair, and get into the act, too. I started out with the main house. It was just lovely as Bess Huntinghouse had arranged it, but show me the woman who is perfectly satisfied with the way another woman has arranged a house and I'll show you a female impersonator. So, in spite of Bess's success with Rancho del Monte just as it was, I launched into a little interior decorating project of my own. From then on I spent most of the day at Dendahl's in Santa Fe racking out new fabrics and most of the night measuring for new curtains and slip covers. I rearranged the furniture in every room at least a dozen times, so often and so thoroughly that poor Bill occasionally came in from the corral and thought he was in the wrong ranch house. In fact, I wasn't even a tenth of the way redecorated when I realized that our first guests were due to arrive on the following day. I felt exactly like a bride who is suddenly told that she's been elected to entertain the British Royal Family, and well I might have, since those first guests were to be none other than the Carroll Binders of Minneapolis.
    The name struck a sort of bell with Bill and a very tiny little triangle in my mind. "Carroll Binder, Carroll Binder," Bill kept musing. "I could swear that I've heard that name before."
    "You're probably thinking of Bookbinder's Restaurant in Philadelphia," I said lightheartedly. "Now give me a hand with this sofa." But even I wasn't so sure.
    "It's a funny thing," Bill kept muttering. "That name is so familiar to me. Carroll Binder, Minneapolis; Minne apolis, Carroll Binder!"
    "Big city, Minneapolis," I said, still with that nagging little doubt. "Now get off the rug while I vacuum."
    At two o'clock the following morning, Bill sat up in bed. "I have it!" he shouted.
    "You've got what?" I grumbled.
    "Carroll Binder! He's an editor of the Minneapolis Tribune. He writes all the editorials. He was on our National Commission to UNESCO. He presided at the UN Subcommission on Freedom of Information and gave the Russians what-for!"
    Together we tumbled out of bed. and raced to a dogeared old copy of Who's Who, heretofore serving as an excellent doorstop. There was Carroll Binder, a good half column of him in minuscule type and bristling with perplexing abbreviations like "b., s., AB, corr., dir. Mpls"— that last is really Minneapolis, but it will always be Mupples to me.
    We didn't bother going back to bed. One look at my newly redecorated ranch house and I suddenly knew it was all wrong. One look at the menu for the week and I knew it was all wrong. One look at Bill and myself and I knew we were all wrong. Nothing was finished, everything was pinned together and badly pinned together. As I started re arranging everything for the thousandth time, I began to visualize a long editorial—perhaps the entire editorial page of the Minneapolis Tribune —dedicated to the horrors of the Hootons and Rancho del Monte.
    In my mind's eye this diatribe began something like this:
     
    "It was our misfortune to pass a few unforgettable days and nights in a New Mexican pigsty called Rancho del Monte. Mismanaged by a pair of New York charlatans who call themselves Mr. and Mrs. William Hooton, Rancho del Monte embodies all the discomforts known to man. The food, the service, the accommodations—all were unspeak able . . ."
     
    And so it went.
    I was in a perfect flap and so was Bill. If only our first guests could be a pack of jolly illiterates with no publishing connections, no experience as lecturers or commentators, and preferably no command of any language more widely used than, say, Catalan. But no. We had to fall not only on our faces but also on the editorial page of a paper with more than half a million readers.
    All that day Bill and I scurried around the ranch house moving this piece of furniture and then moving it back again, setting the table