“I don’t have to go to Patsey to find a goose,” replied Betty, saucily; “you haven’t taken your eyes from that note you just received. I suppose it is from that precious Yankee of yours. Is it a receipt for brown bread? Mother promised me a hen; she actually has two whole ones left, and if I can get eggs I’ll have some chicks before long. And father has a heifer which he traded for, with some old Tory or other, and which he has promised me. But I can’t promise you any great fixings, Lettice, dearly as I want to have you married from our house. Will you come?”
Lettice shook her head. “No, we shall be married at St. Paul’s. I think I would rather not go down again just now, Betty.” And Betty understood. “There should be no sad memories to mar the girl’s wedding,” she reflected.
Yet Lettice did go down once more to her old home, and she stood with her lover in the old graveyard which had been the scene of so many experiences.
“Do you remember the night we first came here together?” Ellicott asked. “I loved you then and was desperately jealous of Robert Clinton.”
“Were you really?” said Lettice. She stood thinking it all over. “You had some reason to be, sir,” she acknowledged. Then she drew closer to him. “But there can never be a cause for that again. No one can ever come between us now, my beloved.” And what answer he made, only the mating birds in the trees above them heard.
A pretty wedding it was, with a goodly array of uniforms to offset the bright gowns. The church was crowded, many bronzed faces were to be seen, and more than one empty sleeve. Lutie, carried away by the occasion, bore her mistress’s train half-way up the aisle, and when she discovered what she had done, she retreated, overcome by confusion, to be scolded by Aunt Hagar, who made her first journey to Baltimore to see “Mars Jeems’s Miss Letty git ma’ied.”
“I prosefy dat match long whiles ergo,” she said to Mammy who, in all her glory, was in charge of Betty’s baby, and waiting to ride to church “lak white folkses.”
“Yass, ma’am, I prosefy dat,” Aunt Hagar reiterated.
“Go ’long,” said Mammy. “Ennybody prosefy dat. Hit don’ tek no preacher ner no luck-ball ter jint dem two f’om de fust. I see dat whilst I nussin’ him dat time.”
“Humph!” Aunt Hagar gave a mighty grunt. “Ef I ain’ hed de prosefyin’ an’ de ’intment, an’ de cunjurin’ o’ dey inimies, whar yuh reckon dem young folkses be now?”