“The man is an unspeakable cad, darling, but I am almost glad it happened, since you escaped unscathed. He won’t bother us again. I’m sure of it! He is not quite low enough to gossip about me to my friends. It is evident that he planned all along to use his knowledge as a club to force you to submit to his desires. And now that he doesn’t want you any more, he will lose interest in the whole subject. I’ve known Van nearly all my life and I’ve never known him to act the cad before. He’s probably despising himself, now that his fever has cooled. If you marry David with our consent, he’ll probably turn up at your wedding and offer sincere congratulations with a whispered reassurance as to his ability to keep our secret.”
“When I marry David, not if!” Sally cried exultantly, flinging her arms about her mother’s neck. “Oh, I’m so glad I have a mother!”
“Don’t strangle me!” Enid laughed. “Leave me strength to write a proposal of marriage to this cocksure young farmer who brags that he is as capable in the kitchen as on the seat of a cultivator!”
“He can’t cook half as well as I can!” Sally scoffed. “You ought to taste one of my apple pies! He can play nurse to his blue-ribbon stock all he wants to, but he’s got to let me do the cooking! And, Mother, you’ll tell him how much I love him, won’t you? And—and you might remind him that we only need half a marriage ceremony—the last half. Wouldn’t it be fun if we could go back to Canfield and let ‘the marrying parson’ finish the job?”
“Don’t be too confident!” Enid warned her. “He may refuse you!” But at sight of Sally’s dismay she relented. “I know he loves you, darling. Don’t worry. If I were you I’d get busy immediately on a trousseau.”
“One dozen kitchen aprons will top the list,” Sally laughed.
Four days later the second telegram that Sally had received from David arrived. “Catching next train East, darling. Happiest man in the world. Can we be married day I arrive? Am wiring your blessed mother also. I’ll be loving you always. David.”
“Of course you can’t be married the day he arrives!” Enid exclaimed indignantly when Sally showed her the telegram. “I’m going to give you a real wedding.”
“I think the children are right, Enid.” Courtney Barr unexpectedly championed Sally in her protest. “A quiet impromptu wedding, by all means. Our announcement to the papers will indicate that we approve, and since the boy is unknown in New York and Sally has only just been introduced, I think the less fuss the better.”
Sally kissed him impulsively, aware, though the knowledge did not hurt her, that he liked her better now that she was to leave his home, than he had ever liked her. David arrived on Monday, and was guest of honor that night at a small party of Enid’s and Sally’s most intimate friends, at which time announcement of the forthcoming marriage was made. They remembered having seen him briefly at Sally’s coming-out party and so handsome he was, so much at ease, now that he was to be married to the girl he loved, that it occurred to none of Enid’s guests to question his eligibility. Sally, sitting proudly beside him, looked happily from her mother to David, knew that in gaining a husband she was not losing a mother, as she would have done if Enid had not interrupted the writing of that terrible letter.