Or if Lieutenant Hawk is also out of town for the day, as he sometimes has to be, because he is in the United States army, Mrs.Everleigh-Spillikins is taken out by old Colonel Shake, who is in the State militia and who is at leisure all the time.
During their walks on Plutoria Avenue one may hear the four boys addressing Mr.Spillikins as "father" and "dad" in deep bull-frog voices.
"Say, dad," drawls Bob, "couldn't we all go to the ball game ?" "No.

Say, dad," says Gib, "let's all go back to the house and play five-cent pool in the billiard-room." "All right, boys," says Mr.Spillikins.And a few minutes later one may see them all hustling up the steps of the Everleigh-Spillikins's mansion, quite eager at the prospect, and all talking together.
* * * * * Now the whole of this daily panorama, to the eye that can read it, represents the outcome of the tangled love story of Mr.Spillikins, which culminated during the summer houseparty at Castel Casteggio, the woodland retreat of Mr.and Mrs.Newberry.
But to understand the story one must turn back a year or so to the time when Mr.Peter Spillikins used to walk on Plutoria Avenue alone, or sit in the Mausoleum Club listening to the advice of people who told him that he really ought to get married.
* * * * * In those days the first thing that one noticed about Mr.Peter Spillikins was his exalted view of the other sex.

Every time he passed a beautiful woman in the street he said to himself, "I say!" Even when he met a moderately beautiful one he murmured, "By Jove!" When an Easter hat went sailing past, or a group of summer parasols stood talking on a leafy corner, Mr.Spillikins ejaculated, "My word!" At the opera and at tango teas his projecting blue eyes almost popped out of his head.
Similarly, if he happened to be with one of his friends, he would murmur, "I say, _do_ look at that beautiful girl," or would exclaim, "I say, don't look, but isn't that an awfully pretty girl across the street ?" or at the opera, "Old man, don't let her see you looking, but do you see that lovely girl in the box opposite ?" One must add to this that Mr.Spillikins, in spite of his large and bulging blue eyes, enjoyed the heavenly gift of short sight.

As a consequence he lived in a world of amazingly beautiful women.

And as his mind was focused in the same way as his eyes he endowed them with all the virtues and graces which ought to adhere to fifty-dollar flowered hats and cerise parasols with ivory handles.
Nor, to do him justice, did Mr.Spillikins confine his attitude to his view of women alone.