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[Illustration: Book Cover]
And So They Were Married
[Illustration: "'It isn't your husband's place to do your work and his
own, too, my dear'" (p. 126)]
And So They Were
Married
_By_
Florence Morse Kingsley
Author of "Titus," "The
Singular Miss Smith," "The
Resurrection of Miss Cynthia"
With Illustrations
By W. B. King
New York
Dodd, Mead & Company
1908
COPYRIGHT, 1908
By THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1908
By FLORENCE MORSE KINGSLEY
CHAPTER I
Dr. North's wife, attired in her dressing-gown and slippers, noiselessly
tilted the shutter of the old-fashioned inside blind and peered
cautiously out. The moon was shining splendidly in the dark sky, and the
empty street seemed almost as light as day. It had been snowing earlier
in the evening, Mrs. North observed absent-mindedly, and the clinging
drifts weighed the dark evergreens on either side of the gate almost to
the ground. A dog barked noisily from his kennel in a neighbouring yard,
and a chorus of answering barks acknowledged the signal; some one was
coming along the moonlit street. There were two figures, as Mrs. North
had expected; she craned her plump neck anxiously forward as the gate
clicked and a light girlish laugh floated up on the frosty air.
"Dear, dear!" she murmured, "I do hope Bessie will come right into the
house. It is too cold to stand outside talking."
Apparently the young persons below did not think so. They stood in the
bright moonlight in full view of the anxious watcher behind the shutter,
the man's tall figure bent eagerly toward the girl, whose delicate
profile Mrs. North could see distinctly under the coquettish sweep of
the broad hat-brim.
"The child ought to have worn her high overshoes," she was thinking,
when she was startled by the vision of the tall, broad figure stooping
over the short, slight one.
Then the key clicked in the lock and the front door opened softly; the
sound was echoed by the closing gate, as the tall figure tramped briskly
away over the creaking snow. The neighbour's dog barked again,
perfunctorily this time, as if acknowledging the entire respectability
of the passer-by; all the other dogs in town responded in kind, and
again there was silence broken only by the sound of a light foot on the
carpeted stair.
Mrs. North opened her door softly. "Is that you, Bessie?"
"Yes, mother."
"Isn't it very late, child?"
"It is only half past eleven."
"Did Louise go with you?"
"No, mother; she had a sore throat, and it was snowing; so her aunt
wouldn't allow her to go."
"Oh!" Mrs. North's voice expressed a faint disapproval.
"Of course we couldn't help it; besides, all the other girls were there
just with their escorts. You and grandma are so--old-fashioned. I'm sure
I don't see why I always have to have some other girl along--and Louise
Glenny of all persons! I couldn't help being just a little bit glad that
she couldn't go."
"Did you have a nice time, dear?"
The girl turned a radiant face upon her mother. "Oh, we had a _lovely_
time!" she murmured. "I--I'll tell you about it to-morrow. Is father
home?"
"Yes; he came in early to-night and went right to bed. I hope the
telephone bell won't ring again before morning."
The girl laughed softly. "You might take off the receiver," she
suggested. "Poor daddy!"
"Oh, no; I couldn't do that. Your father would never forgive me. But I
told him not to have it on his mind; I'll watch out for it and answer
it, and if it's Mrs. Salter again with one of her imaginary sinking
spells I'm going to tell her the doctor won't be in before six in the
morning. I do hope it isn't wrong to deceive that much; but your father
isn't made of iron, whatever some people may think."
The girl laughed again, a low murmur of joy. "Good-night, dear little
mother," she said caressingly. "You are always watching and waiting for
some one; aren't you? But you needn't have worried about _me_." She
stooped and kissed her mother, her eyes shining like stars; then hurried
away to hide the blush which swept her face and neck.
"Dear, dear!" sighed Mrs. North, as she crept back to her couch drawn
close to the muffled telephone, "I suppose I ought to have spoken to
her father before this; but he is always so busy; I hardly have time to
say two words to him. Besides, he thinks Bessie is only a child, and he
would have laughed at me."
The girl was taking off her hat and cloak in her own room. How long ago
it seemed since she had put them on. She smoothed out her white gloves
with caressing fingers. "I shall always keep them," she thought. She was
still conscious of his first kisses, and looked in her glass, as if half
expecting to see some visible token of them.
"I am so happy--so happy!" she murmured to the radiant reflection which
smiled back at her from out its shadowy depths. She leaned forward and
touched the cold smooth surface with her lips in a sudden passion of
gratitude for the fair, richly tinted skin, the large bright eyes with
their long curling lashes, the masses of brown waving hair, and the
pliant beauty of the strong young figure in the mirror.
"If I had been freckled and stoop-shouldered and awkward, like Louise
Glenny, he _couldn't_ have loved me," she was thinking.
She sank to her knees after awhile and buried her face in the coverlid
of her little bed. But she could think only of the look in his eyes when
he had said "I love you," and of the thrilling touch of his lips on
hers. She crept into bed and lay there in a wide-eyed rapture, while the
village clock struck one, and after a long, blissful hour, two. Then she
fell asleep, and did not hear the telephone bell which called her tired
father from his bed in the dim, cold hour between three and four.
She was still rosily asleep and dreaming when Mrs. North came softly
into the room in the broad sunlight of the winter morning.
"Isn't Lizzie awake yet?" inquired a brisk voice from the hall. "My,
_my_! but girls are idle creatures nowadays!"
The owner of the voice followed this dictum with a quick patter of
softly shod feet.
"I didn't like to call her, mother," apologised Mrs. North. "She came in
late, and----"
Grandmother Carroll pursed up her small, wise mouth. "I heard her," she
said, "and that young man with her. I don't know, daughter, but what we
ought to inquire into his prospects and character a little more
carefully, if he's to be allowed to come here so constant. Lizzie's very
young, and----"
"Oh, grandma!" protested a drowsy voice from the pillows; "I'm twenty!"
"Twenty; yes, I know you're twenty, my dear; quite old enough, I should
say, to be out of bed before nine in the morning."
"It wasn't her fault, mother; I didn't call her."
The girl was gazing at the two round matronly figures at the foot of the
bed, her laughing eyes grown suddenly serious. "I'll get up at once,"
she said with decision, "and I'll eat bread and milk for breakfast; I
sha'n't mind."
"She's got something on her mind," whispered Mrs. North to her mother,
as the two pattered softly downstairs.
"I shouldn't wonder," responded Grandmother Carroll briskly. "Girls of
her age are pretty likely to have, and I mistrust but what that young
Bowser may have been putting notions into her head. I hope you'll be
firm with her, daughter; she's much too young for anything of that
sort."
"You were married when you were eighteen, mother; and I was barely
twenty, you know."
"I was a very different girl at eighteen from what Lizzie is," Mrs.
Carroll said warmly. "She's been brought up differently. In my time
healthy girls didn't lie in bed till ten o'clock. Many and many's the
time I've danced till twelve o'clock and been up in the morning at five
'tending to my work. You indulge Lizzie too much; and if that young
Bixler----"
"His name is Brewster, mother; don't you remember? and they say he comes
of a fine old Boston family."
"Well, Brewster or Bixler; it will make no difference to Lizzie, you'll
find. I've been watching her for more than a month back, and I'll tell
you, daughter, when a girl like Lizzie offers to eat bread and milk for
breakfast you can expect almost anything. Her mind is on other things.
I'll never forget the way you ate a boiled egg for breakfast every
morning for a week--and you couldn't bear eggs--about the time the
doctor was getting serious. I mistrusted there was something to pay, and
I wasn't mistaken."
Mrs. North sighed vaguely. Then her tired brown eyes lighted up with a
smile. "I had letters from both the boys this morning," she said; "don't
you want to read them, mother? Frank has passed all his mid-year
examinations, and Elliot says he has just made the 'varsity gym' team."
"Made the _what_?"
"I don't quite understand myself," acknowledged Mrs. North; "but that's
what he said. He said he'd have his numerals to show us when he came
home Easter."
"Hum!" murmured Mrs. Carroll dubiously; "I'm sure I hope he won't break
his neck in any foolish way. Did he say anything about his lessons?"
"Not much; he never was such a student as Frank; but he'll do well,
mother."
Elizabeth North, fresh as a dewy rose and radiant with her new
happiness, came into the room just as Mrs. Carroll folded the last sheet
of the college letters. "I'll ask Lizzie," she said. "Lizzie, what is a
g-y-m team?"
"Oh, grandma!" protested the girl, "_please_ don't call me _Lizzie_.
Bessie is bad enough; but _Lizzie_! I always think of that absurd old
Mother Goose rhyme, 'Elizabeth, Lizzie, Betsey and Bess, all went
hunting to find a bird's nest'; and, besides, you promised me you
wouldn't."
"Lizzie was a good enough name for your mother," said grandma briskly.
"Your father courted and married her under that name, and he didn't
mind." Her keen old eyes behind their shining glasses dwelt triumphantly
on the girl's changing colour. "You needn't tell _me_!" she finished
irrelevantly.
But Elizabeth had possessed herself of the letters, and was already deep
in a laughing perusal of Elliot's scrawl. "Oh, how splendid!" she cried;
"he's made the Varsity, on his ring work, too!"
"I don't pretend to understand what particular _work_ Elliot is
referring to," observed grandma, with studied mildness. "Is it some sort
of mathematics?"
Elizabeth sprang up and flung both arms about the smiling old lady. "You
dear little hypocritical grandma!" she said; "you know perfectly well
that it isn't any study at all, but just gymnastic work--all sorts of
stunts, swinging on rings and doing back and front levers and shoulder
stands and all that sort of thing. Elliot has such magnificent muscles
he can do anything, and better than any one else, and that's why he's on
the varsity, you see!"
"Thank you, Elizabeth," said grandma tranquilly. "I'd entirely forgotten
that young men don't go to college now to study their lessons. My memory
is certainly getting poor."
"No, grandma dear; it isn't. You remember everything a thousand times
better than any one else, and what is more, you know it. But of course
Elliot studies; he has to. Mr. Brewster says he thinks Elliot is one of
the finest boys he knows. He thinks he would make a splendid engineer.
He admires Frank, too, immensely, and----"
"What does the young man think of Elizabeth?" asked Mrs. Carroll with a
wise smile.
"He--oh, grandma; I--didn't mean to tell just yet; but he--I----"
"There, there, child! Better go and find your mother. I mistrust she's
getting you a hot breakfast." She drew the girl into her soft old arms
and kissed her twice.
Elizabeth sprang up all in a lovely flame of blushes and ran out of the
room.