“Sure!”
“That’s right, Cooley.”
“You bet!”
“We’ll do it right while we’re about it,” said the big man. “Here’s ten dollars in me hat. Sweeten as she goes ’round, boys. Let’s buy the boss an’ his girl somethin’ good—somethin’ they won’t be ashamed to keep in the front room an’ tell their friends it come from the boys of Kent’s big drive!”
An hour later the proprietor of Falls City’s leading jewelry store was somewhat startled by an invasion of half a dozen weather-beaten, rough-looking customers quite different from his ordinary patrons; and he nearly fainted when the spokesman told him that they were in search of a wedding present on which they were prepared to expend between three and four hundred dollars.
In the end they chose a cabinet filled with silver, eying respectfully the dainty knives, forks, and spoons, and other articles of whose use they had small conception.
“We want a name plate put on her,” said Cooley, “showing a lad in river clothes standin’ on a log wid a peavey in his fist; an’ above that we want the date; an’ underneath it, ‘From Kent’s River Crew.’”
It is safe to say that never had the church, to whose support old Bill Crooks contributed more often than he attended it, held as motley a gathering as on the morning of the wedding of his daughter and Joe Kent. Big, brown men, painfully shaven, in aggressively new garments which cramped their strong muscles and rendered them awkward and ill at ease, occupied seats beside the members of Falls City’s leading families, who eyed the intruders askance. And here and there, also ill at ease, were old men and women, dependents of William Crooks and friends of his daughter, whom they loved.
Joe and his best man entered from the vestry; but there was a slight delay. They stood before the chancel waiting for the bride and her father.
“The boss is nervous,” Cooley commented to Haggarty in a low whisper. “Look at him shift on his feet. An’ see the ears of him. Red!”