"Betty," she said, "I'm going to make you a little gift. If you shouldn't want to use it maybe Mat will see some way to invest it for you. When the trouble came to Warren, I said he might as well have his part as to wait until I was dead and gone. I have been paid over and over again in comfort. He grows so much like your father, Betty. And he's weathered through the storm and stress. So I'll do the same by you, and if you never get any more you must be content."
It was an order for five hundred dollars. Winthrop Adams would see it paid.
Betty was quite overwhelmed. "I ought to give half of it to mother!" she cried.
"No, no. Your mother will have all she needs. The Mannings would borrow it of her to buy more ground with. I've no patience with all their scrimping, and sometimes I give thanks that poor Elizabeth is out of it all. Don't have an anxious thought about money where you mother is concerned."
"What a comfort you are, Aunt Priscilla."
"Well, it took years enough to teach me that anybody needed comforting."
As for Doris, she was so busy that she could hardly think about herself or Captain Hawthorne. She did wish he had not loved her. If she had known about the rose her heart would have been still more sore and pitiful.
Betty went before the wedding. They took a sloop to New York and were to leave there for Havre.
Madam Royall had this wedding just to her fancy, and it was quite a fine affair. Cary looked very nice, Doris thought, for the sea tan had nearly all bleached out. His figure was compact, and he had a rather soldierly bearing. He was quite a hero, too, to his old college mates, some of whom had not considered him possessed of really strong characteristics.
But the young ladies were proud of his notice and attention, and there was no end of invitations from their mothers when they were going to have evening companies.