Just here, social diplomat as she is, Mrs. Livingston, gathering herself together, gets on her feet, and coming to Erma, gives her a kiss of congratulation, saying, "My dear, I hear you have no proper wedding-ring—let this be your first bridal present;" and places a magnificent ruby of her own on Mrs. Lawrence's finger.
Then they all go through the snow to the grocery, which has a back room that is fitted up as a dining-room, where the champagne flows like water in Western style, and a Nevada congressman with a silver tongue makes a little address to the bride, remarking on orange blossoms in the snow. "The snow we'll keep in the West—the orange blossoms go to the East with the bride, God bless her! But a Western man goes with her!"
This sentiment appealing to Western hearts, and the champagne appealing to Western palates, the gentlemen of the party make a great night of it.
Three days after, the snow blockade at Sherman being broken for a little time, the trains all get under headway, and, with cheering passengers, leave Medicine Bow, run down to Laramie, and the next morning are out of the great snow blockade, and flying across Nebraska towards Omaha.
So, one evening just before Christmas, Harry Lawrence and his wife come into the Grand Central Depot, New York, Erma whispering, "Did ever girl have railroad trip like mine?—I went to find a father and found a husband!" and her eyes beam upon Harry, who is pressing her arm to his side.
From the station they drive to the Everett, where a telegram comes to them from California, announcing the safety of Ralph Travenion, and that he has shipped his Utah Central stock east by Wells, Fargo & Co., and is returning to New York via Panama, for he does not dare to trust himself in Utah.
Thirty days after this, Travenion strolls into their parlor at the Everett, and looking at him, no one would ever have thought that he was once a Mormon bishop, for he is now the same debonair exquisite of the Unity Club that he was years ago, and gives Lawrence his father's blessing, as one.
"My boy, we must make you an Eastern club man," he remarks. "I shall put you up at the Unity and Stuyvesant. We're rich enough to live in the East, and in order to make us richer, let's go over to Boston, and see the heads of the Union Pacific!"
Which they do, and sell the control of the Utah Central, out of which Brigham Young and his fellows go, with wailing and gnashing of teeth, for they know that the hand of the Union Pacific is upon them in railroad matters, and it is a grasping Gentile corporation; in proof of which the Mormon Church does not control one railroad in Utah—though it built nearly all of them.
Some time afterwards, over their dinner-table in New York, Travenion, whose instincts are those of a business man yet, says: "I should have stayed in California. There's a fortune there! Even while in San Francisco, I made some money in mining stocks. Belcher, for instance, had gone up very much."