The night that he came back he gathered us all about him in the library. “Something to say! Important!” he shouted.
“Thinking maybe--get married!” said Uncle Bainbridge. It was just like Uncle Bainbridge to announce the matter in the lady's presence before having formally asked her; but I felt that it was a trifle hard on Miss Sophia. But a glance at her reassured me on that score. She was flushed; but it was the flush of triumph rather than the flush of embarrassment.
“Bought a brewery!” said Uncle Bainbridge. “Good brewery! Good beer! Like English beer! Like English people!”
1 felt that this was a little irrelevant, and I am sure that Miss Sophia felt the same way.
“Bought a castle!” said Uncle Bainbridge, warming to the work. “Fine castle! Like castles! Fix it up! Live in it! Settle here! Like England! Fine country.”
“A castle! Oh, how lovely!” shrilled Miss Sophia, clapping her hands girlishly. “How lovely for all of us!”
“Not invited!” roared Uncle Bainbridge, taking us all in with one sweeping gesture. “None of you!”
“Going to get married!” said Uncle Bainbridge, rising to his feet. “Not Sophia! Caught Sophia--behind bookcase! Knew all the time! Sneaky trick! Marry fine woman! Henry saw her--over the fence that day! Fine woman! Curate's mother here! Dumplings! Fine dumplings! Learned to make 'em for me! She don't want--to get too thick--with any my relations! She says--all of you--are too American!”
And as Uncle Bainbridge blew his nose loudly and sat down there was a sudden rattle of rapping from the bookcase: nothing so articulate as a remark in the code, but a sound more like a ripple of well-bred laughter. This was the last we ever heard from Lady Agatha, and I have sometimes wondered just what she meant by it. It is so hard, sometimes, to understand just what the English are laughing at.
The bench, the barrel, and the cracker box in front of Hennery McNabb's general store held three men, all of whom seemed to be thinking. Two of them were not only thinking but chewing tobacco as well. The third, more enterprising than the other two, more active, was exerting himself prodigiously. He was thinking, chewing tobacco, and whittling all at the same time.
Two of the men were native and indigenous to Hazel-ton. They drew their sustenance from the black soil of the Illinois prairie on which the little village was perched. They were as calm and placid as the growing corn in the fields round about, as solid and self-possessed and leisurely as the bull-heads in the little creek down at the end of Main Street.