The engagement was suspected before it was really admitted. There were various comments, of course. Daffodil Carrick had been waiting for something fine, and she could afford to marry a poor man with her possible fortune, and her father's prosperity. And some day a girl would be in luck to get young Sandy Carrick.
Lieutenant Langdale took it pretty hard. He had somehow hoped against hope, for he believed the Carricks would refuse a man who had come a stranger in the place. If he could call him out and shoot him down in a duel! He shut himself up in his room, and drank madly for two days before he came to his senses.
March came in like the lion and then dropped down with radiant suns that set all nature aglow. There were freshets, but they did little damage. Trees budded and birds came and built in the branches. Bees flew out in the sunshine, squirrels chattered, and the whole world was gay and glad.
One day the lovers went up the winding path to the old hill-top, where Jeffrey insisted he had first lost his heart to her. They sat on the same tree trunk, and he said verses to her, but instead of Clorinda it was Daffodil. And they talked sweet nonsense, such as never goes out of date between lovers. And when they came down they looked at the daffodil bed. The buds had swollen, some were showing yellow.
"Why, it can be next week!" cried the lover joyously.
"Yes," said the mother, with limpid eyes, remembering when the child was born.
There was not much to make ready. The cake had been laid away to season, so that it would cut nicely. There was a pretty new church now, and the marriage would be solemnized there, with a wedding feast at home, and then a round of parties for several evenings at different houses. The Trents had just finished their house, which was considered quite a mansion, and the carpets had come from France. They would give the first entertainment.
She had written to her guardian, who sent her a kindly letter, wishing her all happiness. The winter had been a rather hard one for him, for an old enemy that had been held in abeyance for several years, rheumatism, had returned, and though it was routed now, it had left him rather enfeebled, otherwise he would have taken the journey to see his ward, the little girl grown up, whose visit he had enjoyed so much, and whom he hoped to welcome in his home some time again.
And with it came a beautiful watch and chain. Presents were not much in vogue in those days, and their rarity made them all the more precious.
They dressed the house with daffodils, but the bride-to-be was all in white, the veil the great-grandmother had worn in Paris, fastened with a diamond circlet just as she had had it.