The ceremony was short. The giant, who proved to be Big Tom, gave away the bride. As the couple rushed off for a brief honeymoon, the newly made Mrs. Reid--still with the shimmer of tears in her beautiful eyes--tried hard to resume her old manner.
"'Member, Kitty," she called back from the stairway in a voice that trembled, "you can't make that antelope cavort too lively. Brown'll send photographs in the morning."
Soon only Mr. Winship and I were left with Kitty and Helen and the painted Indians.
"What a Cadge!" said Helen languidly, as she walked with us to the door. "But she's the best girl in the world."
I believe she's pretty nearly right. I haven't always done Miss Bryant justice. My mind dwelt upon the lovely picture she had made of trust and happiness; and I wondered whether my own wife would show shining, happy eyes like hers when--In my restless dreams the vision of them lingered, grotesquely alternating with a swaying figure driving a shadowy antelope--a figure that was sometimes Helen's and sometimes little Ethel's--until I waked--
And thus began to-day--it has been the hardest day in a hard week.
It is three hours now, maybe, since we returned from Mrs. Baker's Sunday dinner. A love feast after a feud is trying, but Helen was brave. Mrs. Baker is too honest for diplomacy, and at first I watched Helen nervously, as she sat in the familiar library, a red spot in each cheek, pitting a quiet hauteur against the embarrassed chirpings of her aunt and Milly's sphynx-like silence.
But little by little the cordiality of the Judge and of his tactful sister, helped by Ethel's radiant delight and Mr. Winship's pleasure in the visit, gave another flavour to the dinner than that of the fatted calf, and warmed the atmosphere out of its chill reminiscence of the encounter with Hynes.
The children, too, were a resource, though for a minute Joy was a terror. Baker, junior, was offering me a kodak picture, when she came running up to look at it.
"You can have it," said Boy; "it's clearer than the one you liked the other day."
"Thath me!" cried Joy, with a fiendish hop and skip. "Me'n Efel on 'e thidewalk. Mither Burke, you like me'n Efel?"
"Efel too, or o'ny me? Mr. Burke, w'y you don't like Efel too?"