“Why, it’s Archie Lovell!”
It was followed almost immediately by another:—
“And Nancy Turner’s with him!”
“No; it’s Nancy Lovell,” announced Aunt Naomi, in a voice audible all over the vestry. “They were married in Boston.”
The bridal couple advanced. All about the room the ladies rose, but instead of greeting the newcomers, they looked at the “three widows,” and waited as if to give them first an opportunity of accosting their mate, thus returned as if from the very grave, and so inopportunely bringing another mate with him. Miss Burrage and Miss Foster shrank from sight behind the backs of those nearest to them; but Mattie Seaton swept impulsively forward with her hand extended cordially. Her crisp black hair curled about her temples, her eyes shone, and her teeth flashed between her red lips.
“Why, Archie, dear,” she said, in her clear, resonant voice, “we thought we had lost you forever. We all supposed you were dead, and here you are only married. Let me congratulate you, though after being engaged to so many girls, it must seem queer to be married to only one!—and you, Nancy,” she went on, before Archie could make other reply than to shake hands; “to think you got him after all, just because you went ahead and caught him! I congratulate you with all my heart; only look out for him. He’ll make love to every woman he sees.”
She bent forward and kissed the bride before Mrs. Lovell could have known her intention, and turned quickly.
“Come, Delia,” she called across the vestry; “come, Mary! There’s nothing for us to do but to go home and take off our black. We may have better luck next time!”
With this ambiguous observation, which might have been construed to cast rather a sinister reflection upon the return to life of the young lieutenant, she swept out of the vestry, complete mistress of the situation; and although Archie Lovell always strenuously denied that he had ever been engaged to any woman besides the one he married, a general feeling prevailed in Tuskamuck that no girl could have carried it off with a high hand as Mattie did, if she had not had some sort of an understanding to serve her as a support.