Old enough, I should think, if you ever intend to marry. Wilford," and the old man faced square about: "I know nothing of the girl, except what I gathered from your mother and sisters. You have not asked my advice. I don't suppose you want it, but if you do, here it is. If you love the girl and she is respectable, marry her if she is poor as poverty and the daughter of a tinker; but if you don't love her, and she's rich as a nabob, for thunder's sake keep away from her."
This was the elder Cameron's counsel, and Katy's cause arose fifty per cent, in consequence. Still Wilford was sadly disquieted, so much so that his partner, Mark Ray, could not fail to observe that something was troubling him, and at last frankly asked what it was. Wilford knew he could trust Mark, and he confessed the whole, telling him far more of Silverton than he had told his mother, and then asking what his friend would do were the case his own.
Fond of fun and frolic, Mark laughed immoderately at Wilford's description of Aunt Betsy bringing her "herrin' bone" patchwork into the parlor, and telling him it was a part of Katy's "settin' out," but when it came to her hint for an invitation to visit in New York, the amused young man roared with laughter, wishing so much that he might live to see the day when poor Aunt Betsy Barlow stood ringing for admittance at No. ——Fifth Avenue.
"Wouldn't it be rich, though, the meeting between your Aunt Betsy and Juno?" and the tears fairly poured down the young man's face.
But Wilford was too serious for trifling, and after his merriment had subsided, Mark talked with him candidly, sensibly, of Katy Lennox, whose cause he warmly espoused, telling Wilford that he was far too sensitive with regard to family and position.
"You are a good fellow on the whole, but too outrageously proud," he said. "Of course this Aunt Betsy in her pongee, whatever that may be, and the uncle in his shirt sleeves, and this mother whom you describe as weak and ambitious, are objections which you would rather should not exist; but if you love the girl, take her, family and all. Not that you are to transport the whole colony of Barlows to New York," he added, as he saw Wilford's look of horror, "but make up your mind to endure what cannot be helped, resting yourself upon the fact that your position is such as cannot well be affected by any marriage you might make, provided the wife were right."
This was Mark Ray's advice, and it had great weight with Wilford, who knew that Mark came, if possible, from a better line of ancestry than himself, inasmuch as his maternal grandmother was a near relative of the English Percys, and the daughter of a lord. And still Wilford hesitated, waiting until the winter was over before he came to the decision which when it was reached was firm as a granite rock. He had made up his mind at last to marry Katy Lennox if she would accept him, and he told his mother so in the presence of his sisters, when one evening they were all kept at home by the rain. There was a sudden uplifting of Bell's eyelashes, a contemptuous shrug of her shoulders, and then she went on with the book she was reading, wondering if Katy was at all inclined to literature, and thinking if she were that it might be easier to tolerate her. Juno, who was expected to say the sharpest things, turned upon him with the exclamation:
"If you can stand those two feather beds, you can do more than I supposed," and as one means of showing her disapproval, she quitted the room, while Bell, who had taken to writing articles on the follies of the age, soon followed her sister to elaborate an idea suggested to her mind by her brother's contemplated marriage.
Thus left alone with her son, Mrs. Cameron tried all her powers of persuasion upon him in vain. But nothing she said influenced him in the least, seeing which she suddenly confronted him with the question: "Shall you tell her all? A husband should have no secrets of that kind from his wife."
Wilford's face was white as ashes, and his voice trembled as he replied: "Yes, mother, I shall tell her all; but, oh! you do not know how hard it has been for me to bring my mind to that, or how sorry I am that we ever kept that secret—when Genevra died—"
"Hush-h!" came warningly from the mother as Juno reappeared, the warning indicating that Genevra, whoever she might be, was a personage never mentioned, except by mother and son.
As Juno remained the conversation was not resumed, and the next morning Wilford wrote to Katy Lennox the letter which carried to her so much of joy, and to Dr. Grant so much of grief. To wait four weeks, as Katy said he must, was a terrible trial to Wilford, who counted every moment which kept him from her side. It was all owing to Dr. Grant and that perpendicular Helen, he knew, for Katy in her letter had admitted that the waiting was wholly their suggestion; and Wilford's thoughts concerning them were anything but complimentary, until a new idea was suggested, which drove every other consideration from his mind.
Wilford was naturally jealous, but that fault had once led him into so deep a trouble that he had struggled hard to overcome it, and now, at its first approach, after he thought it dead, he tried to shake it off—tried not to believe that Morris cared especially for Katy. But the mere possibility was unendurable, and in a most feverish state of excitement he started again for Silverton.
As before, Morris was waiting for him at the station, his cordial greeting and friendly manner disarming him from all anxiety in that quarter, and making him resolve anew to trample the demon jealousy under his feet, where it could never rise again. Katy's life should not be darkened by the green monster, he thought, and her future would have been bright indeed had it proved all that he pictured it as he drove along with Morris in the direction of the farmhouse, for he was to stop there first and then at night go over to sleep at Linwood.
Katy was waiting for him, and as he met her alone, he did not hesitate to kiss her more than once as he kept her for a moment in his arms, and then held her off to see if her illness had left any traces upon her. It had not, except it were in the increased delicacy of her complexion and the short hair now growing out in silky rings. She was very pretty in her short hair, but Wilford felt a little impatient as he saw how childish it made her look, and thought how long it would take for it to attain its former length. He was already appropriating her to himself, and devising ways of improving her. In New York, with Morris Grant standing before his jealous gaze, he could see no fault in Katy, and even now, with her beside him, and the ogre jealousy gone, he saw no fault in her; it was only her dress, and that could be so easily remedied. Otherwise she was perfect, and in his delight at meeting her again he forgot to criticise the farmhouse and its occupants, as he had done before.
They were very civil to him—the mother overwhelmingly so—insomuch that Wilford could not help detecting her anxiety that all should be settled this time. Helen, on the contrary, was unusually cool, confirming him in his opinion that she was strong-minded and self-willed, and making him resolve to remove Katy as soon as possible from her strait-laced influence. When talking with his mother he had said that if Katy had told him "yes," he should probably place her at some fashionable school for a year or two; but on the way to Silverton he had changed his mind. He could not wait a year, and if he married Katy at all, it should he immediately. He would then take her to Europe, where she could have the best of teachers, besides the advantage of traveling; and it was a very satisfactory picture he drew of the woman whom he should introduce into New York society as his wife, Mrs. Wilford Cameron. It is true that Katy had not yet said the all-important word, but she was going to say it, and when late that afternoon they came up from the walk he had asked her to take, she was his promised wife.
They had sat together on the very rock where Katy sat that day when Uncle Ephraim told her of the different paths there were through life, some pleasant and free from care, some thorny and full of grief. Katy had never forgotten the conversation, and, without knowing why, she had always avoided that rock beneath the butternut as a place where there had been revealed to her a glimpse of something sad; and so, when Wilford proposed resting there, she at first objected, but yielded at last, and, with his arm around her, listened to the story of his love. It was what she had expected and thought herself prepared for, but when it came it was so real, so earnest, that she could only clasp her hands over
