Joseph was a happy man that evening. He was going to testify for the first time the pride and glory within him, by presenting a _cadeau_ to his promised bride. How should he contrive that it might be rich and rare enough to express his worship, and be worthy of the object? Could he have fetched down a star--one of those which last night had beamed so kindly on their espousal--that might perhaps have been enough; but less than a star out of heaven seemed all inadequate. The writing-room of the hotel was too open and profane a place for him to sit in, while he indited his order to Tiffany the jeweller, for such a purpose. He made them carry store of stationery to his room. And then about the post. Did no mail go out to-night? The clerk reminded him rebukingly that it was Sunday. They never sent to the Junction on Sunday nights, and no one in serious-minded New England would wish them to do it. "Ten dollars for a messenger to go at once," was Joseph's sole reply, as he followed the stationery to his room, to be overtaken before he had gone many steps by the porter and the bell-boy, both eager to break the Sabbath at the price he had named.
Senator Deane, lounging by the clerk's desk, turned to Mr Sefton with a remarkably knowing look. "Canada Pacific. You bet! Something up. Telegraph clerk away for the day. Something important."
Sapphires, diamonds, and precious stones danced before the mind's eye of Joseph Naylor. How pale and small and poor they seemed to him! How could enough of them to testify his love, be collected on so trivial an object as a finger-ring? "Spare no expense," he wrote, offering an unusual price, and expressing his willingness to double it if needful. "Only let it be the best." The ring from Cleopatra's finger would have been too poor. And so the order was sent, and Tiffany of New York, having assured himself of the writer's sufficiency, sent a clerk with designs to wait on so lavish-minded a client.
The clerk arrived in due time, was closeted in long consultation, and on leaving could not but mention to the clerk of the house the princely order he had taken. The house-clerk listened with pride. It was a credit to Clam Beach; and in fancy he saw scores of fashionable damsels arriving with heaps of luggage, all hoping to be objects of a like munificence. He mentioned the circumstance, in confidence, to each male guest who came to him for cigar-lights; the males, as was to be expected, repeated it to the females, and soon there was not a soul in the house who had not heard the news. It was the common talk with every one but Joseph. He, good man, never doubted the closeness of his secret. He had not breathed a word, but to his sister-in-law, and she would not circulate the report. She had been behaving to him like an injured woman ever since his telling her; but she had not lost hope, he suspected, promising herself, on the contrary, that it would end in nothing; and therefore would not help to assure it by spreading the news.