The ambassador forgot that he was hot and cross.He forgot that he was dusty.His face radiated satisfaction and perspiration.Here at last were people who appreciated him and his high office.And as the mayor helped him into the automobile, and those students who lived in Stillwater welcomed him with strange yells, and the moving-picture machine aimed at him point blank, he beamed with condescension.But inwardly he was ill at ease.
inwardly he was chastising himself for having, through his ignorance of America, failed to appreciate the importance of the man he had come to honor.When he remembered he had never even heard of Doctor Gilman he blushed with confusion.And when he recollected that he had been almost on the point of refusing to come to Stillwater, that he had considered leaving the presentation to his secretary, he shuddered.What might not the Sultan have done to him! What a narrow escape!
Attracted by the band, by the sight of their fellow townsmen in khaki, by the sight of the stout gentleman in the red fez, by a tremendous liking and respect for Doctor Gilman, the entire town of Stillwater gathered outside his cottage.And inside, the old professor, trembling and bewildered and yet strangely happy, bowed his shoulders while the ambassador slipped over them the broad green scarf and upon his only frock coat pinned the diamond sunburst.In woeful embarrassment Doctor Gilman smiled and bowed and smiled, and then, as the delighted mayor of Stillwater shouted, "Speech,"in sudden panic he reached out his hand quickly and covertly, and found the hand of his wife.
"Now, then, three Long ones!" yelled the cheer leader."Now, then, 'See the Conquering Hero!'" yelled the bandmaster.
"Attention! Present arms!" yelled the militia captain; and the townspeople and the professors applauded and waved their hats and handkerchiefs.And Doctor Gilman and his wife, he frightened and confused, she happy and proud, and taking it all as a matter of course, stood arm in arm in the frame of honeysuckles and bowed and bowed and bowed.And the ambassador so far unbent as to drink champagne, which appeared mysteriously in tubs of ice from the rear of the ivy-covered cottage, with the mayor, with the wives of the professors, with the students, with the bandmaster.Indeed, so often did he unbend that when the perfectly new automobile conveyed him back to the Touraine, he was sleeping happily and smiling in his sleep.
Peter had arrived in America at the same time as had the insignia, but Hines and Stetson would not let him show himself in Stillwater.They were afraid if all three conspirators foregathered they might inadvertently drop some clew that would lead to suspicion and discovery.
So Peter worked from New York, and his first act was anonymously to supply his father and Chancellor Black with All the newspaper accounts of the great celebration at Stillwater.When Doctor black read them he choked.Never before had Stillwater College been brought so prominently before the public, and never before had her president been so utterly and completely ignored.And what made it worse was that he recognized that even had he been present he could not have shown his face.How could he, who had, as every one connected with the college now knew, out of spite and without cause, dismissed an old and faithful servant, join in chanting his praises.He only hoped his patron, Hallowell senior, might not hear of Gilman's triumph.But Hallowell senior heard little of anything else.At his office, at his clubs, on the golf-links, every one he met congratulated him on the high and peculiar distinction that had come to his pet college.