What adaptive aptitude servants have! How long would it take me to talk of “Mr. and Mrs. Curling” as glibly as if they had been man and wife ten years?
I sat down and pretended to feel at my ease, meanwhile watching the door anxiously. In about three minutes’ time it opened, and in came--everybody! Yes, I protest all my relations swarmed in at once. First came my uncle, with his shirt collars well up above his ears; then came my aunt with red eyes; then came Conny looking white as a sheet: and then came Curling--already a bruised and broken son-in-law, glancing with scared eyes about him, and stepping forward with the nervous, dubious air you may have observed in a decayed tradesman, who, having called four times with a subscription paper, is mistaken by your servant, and asked to “walk in.”
I stood up, not knowing whom to shake hands with first.
“How are you, Charlie?” said my uncle in a melancholy voice. “We were all in the library when you came.”
My aunt took an arm-chair, breathing noisily.
“I am glad to welcome you home,” said I, taking Conny’s hand, and feeling as if I were saluting a stranger.
“Thank you,” she whispered, hanging her head; and then gave her husband a glance.
Poor little girl! I knew what she meant. The eyes of the mother were upon me; I was the Representative of the Family Gentility. My soul warmed to a magnanimous impulse, and, extending my hand cordially to Mr. Curling, I exclaimed in a loud, impressive voice,
“I heartily congratulate you on your choice of a wife; and I hope you will both be spared for many long years to be a comfort to each other.”
Boh! boh! Conny burst into tears, ran up to me, clung to my arm, and upturning her sweet, deceitful eyes, now with their rich blue deepened by tears, cried,
“Oh, Charlie, I knew you would forgive me! I always felt you would! Do ask mamma to love me again, and to be friends with Theodore.”
“She will need no asking,” I answered, feeling perfectly patriarchal, and thinking what a mean figure I was involuntarily making Mr. Theodore cut. “Her heart is the kindest that ever beat in a woman’s bosom; and I shall be greatly mistaken if, after you have allowed her a little breathing time, to recover the shock, she does not clasp her only, her beloved child again to her breast, and forgive the man whose only sin has been that he has loved her daughter too well.”