“I'd almost think, Miss, in that case, you'd be in hot water.”
“It's in the kettle,” said Uncle Abimelech, and Madge McCulloch, “So it is! I wonder if there's tea.”
Then she and Stevey Todd laid the table, and we sat watching her make tea, and saw no objections.
“Shall I tell you about it?” she said calmly, pouring tea.
“If so be it's agreeable, Miss,” said Stevey Todd; and Uncle Abimelech said, “I takes no sugar in mine,” but Captain Tom was silent.
She said she had run out of the back door before it was beginning to grow dusk, and climbed the fence and gotten into Corliss' sleigh, but she was afraid they were seen by neighbours; so that it appeared likely Andrew McCulloch would hear about their going. “He might come after by-and-by, and do something that would be very hot,—Wouldn't it?”
Stevey Todd said, “It might be as you say, Miss,” and Uncle Abimelech, “It's better when it's hot,” looking into his teacup as if disappointed, but Captain Tom said nothing.
“It was snowing and drifting,” she went on, “and we kept falling into ditches, but at last we saw the light of the hotel by the roadside and were glad.”
So Billy Corliss had come and bounced at the door, and said he wanted a minister, and quite right he was with respect to those circumstances and Madge McCulloch, as Stevey Todd hinted, though cautiously.
When Pemberton and Corliss came back with the minister, it was clear that Pemberton agreed with Stevey Todd on that point. It may be he was not in the habit of agreeing with Andrew McCulloch. Certainly he gave Madge McCulloch away in marriage to Billy Corliss. And she, saying that she wanted a maid-of-honour, chose Uncle Abimelech for that purpose, which seemed scarcely reasonable, but the minister married them and went his way. Then Stevey Todd could not get over thinking he would have been a better maid-of-honour than Uncle Abimelech, more suitable and more according to the talents of each, and he said this, though indirectly and warily; and Uncle Abimelech said that he recollected licking Stevey Todd thirty years back on the Hebe Maitland, “took him across his knee and whaled him good;” and Stevey Todd, though cautiously, seemed to hint that some one who might be Abe Dalrimple, couldn't do it again, and in other respects resembled a dry codfish. Billy Corliss stood up and said: