Bargain day at Tutt House

Bargain Day at Tutt House is a comic tale by George Randolph Chester, first published in 1905, about two wealthy couples stranded at a run-down country inn.

A flood washes out the road, and the only shelter for miles is Tutt House, a small inn kept by cranky old Uncle Billy Tutt. Business has been slow since the railway went in nearby and travelers stopped needing his noonday meals, so Uncle Billy sees his chance for payback: he means to charge his stranded guests until they squeal. Two fashionable families, each with a well-groomed wife who has spent years guarding her social standing against the other, find themselves trapped under the same roof, and neither will admit she recognizes her rival.

What follows is a light comedy of pretend strangers, wounded pride, and a shrewd old innkeeper who knows exactly how to make rich people pay for their manners. There's the same sly comic touch found in the same writer's later, better-known con-man satires, here turned gently on social climbers who work so hard at looking like they don't care. It is old-fashioned American humor, close in spirit to O. Henry's small-town comedies, with more mischief than malice. Listeners who enjoy a comedy of manners, a bit of turn-of-the-century social satire, or stories that turn on wounded pride and mistaken pretenses should feel right at home.

Elizabeth Grace keeps it slow and mild, letting the squabbling guests and the creaky old inn fade to background noise. It's short and easy to slip away inside, before Uncle Billy has even totted up the bill.