A QUIET WEDDING.
The marriage of Will and Ease was naturally a quiet one. Wedding Ease
with the certainty of hard work before him, and with the consciousness
of taking up a man's burdens, Will was thoughtful and grave. He was
full of a serious joy, and, as Patty declared, began already to look
older and more sedate. Regret as he might the loss to his bride of her
old home, he secretly experienced a virile joy that their fortunes were
to be of his own carving.
"My boy," Dr. Sanford said to him upon the eve of his wedding-day,
"make two agreements with your wife the day you marry, and stick to
them,--never to cry over spilt milk, and never to cross a bridge till
you come to it. That takes care of the past and the future; and, if you
cannot bear the present together, you had better separate."
Bathalina, too, had her word to say.
"I approve of your bein' married," she said. "Some folks don't take no
stock in folks gettin' married so young; but I believe in it. Then you
ain't so much older than your children that they treat you as if you
was their grand-dad; but they're kind of company for you. Now, when
you get to be an old man, you may have a son as old as or older than
yourself to stick by you. I always believed in folks bein' married
young myself."
The ceremony took place at the Episcopal church, which the Mullens had
for years attended, and was wholly free from display.
"God bless you!" Dr. Sanford greeted the newly-wedded pair as they
stepped over the threshold of his home. "May you never be less in love
than now!"
On the following day Miss Mullen flitted from Montfield like the
last-remaining bittern, and established herself with her maiden cousin
in Boston, where she gradually recovered her normal condition, and
posed before a circle of select if somewhat antiquated people, among
whom she soon came to feel perfectly at home.
Meanwhile life in Montfield went on much as usual. Tom Putnam
endeavored vainly to come to an understanding with Patty. She
resolutely avoided him, except on a single occasion. As Ease and Patty
sat sewing one day, conversation turned on Mrs. Toxteth's masquerade.
"Do you know," Ease said, "I never found out what you wore? Emily Purdy
told me beforehand that you were going in a man's dress, but of course
I didn't believe that."
"Emily Purdy!" exclaimed Patty.
In an instant the whole matter was clear to her, and she saw how Putnam
had obtained his knowledge of her costume. The following day she met
the lawyer on the street, and stopped him with a little gesture of the
hand.
"It is hardly worth while to bother you with apologies," she said;
"but I shall respect myself a trifle more if I tell you that I have
discovered how you knew of my masquerade-dress, and I beg your pardon
for so misjudging you."
"You do not need to apologize," said he eagerly. "It is I who should"--
"Not at all," she interrupted. "Good-morning."
And she walked swiftly away.
For the rest of our friends, Burleigh continually urged upon Flossy
the desirability of a speedy marriage; Clarence Toxteth had taken his
wounded heart, or vanity, to Europe; Mrs. Smithers took possession of
Mullen House; and December brooded in a sulky, rainy mood over the land.
* * * * *
"A green Christmas," Mrs. Sanford said, "makes a full churchyard. I
knew we'd have a mild fall when the 21st of September was so mild.
Don't you remember, mother? The wind was south-west, and the day very
warm."
"The weather has truly been very warm this season," replied grandmother
Sanford.
"I think it must be the weather," continued Mrs. Sanford, "that ails
Bathalina. She isn't worth any thing for work now: all she'll do is
the heavy talking and light lifting. She seems to lay up her husband's
death against the doctor. But, as I told her, Peter wouldn't respond to
the medicine; and what could Charles do?"
"I know of only one thing Bathalina is good for now," Patty remarked.
"She'd make a very ornamental figure in a lunatic-asylum, with her long
widow's veil."
"She is certainly crazy enough," put in Flossy. "She told me last night
that Noah must have been familiar with the Bible, because he gave his
sons names out of it, and that that showed how old the Bible was."
"There comes Will with the letters," Ease said, running to meet him.
"It's as good as eating perennial wedding-cake to see Ease and Will,"
Flossy laughed. "They are those two souls, you know, that have only a
single thought."
"Young married couples," Patty returned somewhat cynically, "are apt to
be so foolish that a single thought is quite as much as they can get up
between them."
"You are getting misanthropical," Flossy said. "It isn't becoming. And,
so saying, she went to stir up the young couple to see--Oh, here you
are!"
"Here's a letter for Patty," Will said: "I think it is from Hazard
Breck."
The letter which he put into his sister's hands was written in a bold,
somewhat boyish hand, which always seemed to Patty very like Hazard
himself. It was as follows:--
DEAR PATTY,--I don't know as I ought to write to you as I am going
to, but I am sure you are too much my friend not to understand that I
mean right. I want your help; and, to make things clear, I must tell
you something. You know that Smithers woman who has got possession of
Mullen House, and I dare say you have heard folks blame uncle Tom
for taking so much care of her. He has always treated her better than
she deserved. When her daughter ran away, she came after him to help
find her; but they lost all trace till now. I am mixing things all
up, for I hate to tell you the truth: it must come, though. You know
well enough what father was, and--think how hard it is for me to tell
you, Patty, and you'll excuse my writing this--Mrs. Smithers always
said that this girl, her daughter, was my half-sister. Father asked
uncle Tom, on his death-bed, to take care of the two; and she's had an
income out of his pocket. The man with whom Alice Smithers ran away
from Samoset has left her, and somehow or other she has got here. She
met me on the street, and begged for a bit of bread. She is sick and
penniless, and promises, that, if her mother will let her come home,
she will behave. Mrs. Smithers only answers her letters by threats
of vengeance if she dares go to Mullen House. I can't write to uncle
Tom; for Mrs. Smithers hates him for having tried to make her behave
decently, and, now that she is independent, she will do nothing for
him. Cannot you do something, Patty, to help this poor girl? She looks
half dead, and she has always been delicate.
I am too troubled about this to write about any thing else; but I hope
you will have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
Very truly yours,
HAZARD BRECK.
Patty read this letter carefully twice. Then she started up.
"I am going down to the brook for rose-hips to put about the
Christmas-cake," she said.