Before he released his hold of her, Mrs. Cowdrick entered the room, and was so much overcome by the intensity of her emotions when she saw the lovers, that she dropped upon the sofa, and remained in a hysterical condition for at least ten minutes, despite the efforts of Mr. Cowdrick to soothe her.
When Mrs. Cowdrick’s emotion had at last been brought to some extent under control, Mr. Cowdrick suggested that it might be as well to fix at once upon a day for the wedding, so that the two lovers, after all the sorrows and misunderstandings that had kept them apart, might enter the perfect bliss and the sure serenity of wedlock.
Mr. Cowdrick pressed for an early date, and although Mrs. Cowdrick betrayed new and alarming hysterical symptoms when her husband expressed the opinion that all the arrangements might be made within a week, she finally reconciled herself to the selection by Leonie of a day exactly three weeks distant.
Upon the very next morning Mrs. Cowdrick and Leonie began the work of preparation; and it is unnecessary to say that while the labor continued, both of them were in a state of nearly perfect felicity.
If earth is ever to a woman a little heaven here below, it is when she is called upon to go shopping upon a large scale with a long purse. The female mind experiences the purest joy when there are bonnets to be trimmed, fabrics to be matched, dresses to be made, underclothing to be stitched and frilled, pillow-cases and sheets to be made up, towels to be fringed and marked, furniture to be selected, crockery to be purchased, and a general fitting-out to be undertaken. Mrs. Cowdrick soon had a dozen sempstresses employed, and every day she and Leonie, in a frame of exquisite happiness, made the round of the shops, gathering huge heaps of parcels. One single touch of alloy came to mitigate the intensity of their enjoyment. The diamond merchant and the dealer in sealskin sacques, having learned from harsh experience the peril of Mrs. Cowdrick’s enthusiasm for nice things, unkindly insisted upon making their contributions to Leonie’s outfit upon a basis of cash in hand before delivery of the goods. But then we must not expect to have absolutely pure joy in this world.
Cards for the wedding were sent out at once to all of the friends of the bride and groom, and of Mr. and Mrs. Cowdrick. Of course, it can hardly be expected that the union of two lovers should excite very tender sympathy among disinterested persons; but it is rather melancholy to reflect that most of the individuals who received cards from the Cowdricks did not accept the compliment with unmixed satisfaction. The first thought that occurred to them upon reading the invitation was that they would be compelled to expend something for wedding presents, and many of them had a feeling, not clearly defined, but still strong, that the marriage of Cowdrick’s daughter was somehow a mean kind of an attempt on Cowdrick’s part to levy tribute upon them.
The presents, however, soon began to come in. Father Tunicle was heard from among the first. He sent a sweet little volume of his sermons (the lithographed discourse not being included among them). The book had been published at the cost of a few of the reverend gentleman’s admirers, whose expectations of the result were rather disappointed by the sale of no more than thirty-four copies within two years. Father Tunicle sent the book to Leonie, with a touching note, requesting her especial attention to the sermon upon Auricular Confession, upon page 75. Colonel Hoker, of the Crab, sent a handsome silver-plated tea-set, whose value to Leonie was not in any manner decreased by the circumstance, unknown to her, that the Colonel had taken it from a former advertiser in payment for a bad debt. The De Flukes sent a pair of elegant fish-knives quite large enough to have served at a dinner where a moderate-sized whale should follow the soup, and certainly utterly useless for the dissection and distribution of any fish of smaller dimensions than a sturgeon. The Higginses, who were not in very good circumstances, and who were trying hard to save up enough money to pay for a fortnight’s visit to the seaside in the summer, reluctantly sent a cake-basket, because Mr. Cowdrick had given one to Maria Higgins the year before, upon the occasion of her union with Dr. Turmeric. If Mr. Higgins had ventured, in the note he sent with the gift, to express his true feelings, the vehemence of his utterance would have made Leonie’s head swim; but, happily, he controlled himself.
A perfect outrage was, however, perpetrated by Mr. John Doubleday, who had lost heavily by the failure of Mr. Cowdrick’s bank. He positively had the impudence to enclose to Leonie, with his compliments, a cheque for one hundred dollars upon the aforesaid late financial institution. Mr. Cowdrick said that a man who was capable of doing a thing of that kind was not fit to live in civilized society.
Mr. Weems’s artist friends all sent pictures, evidently with an intent that Weems should begin his married life with the walls of his dwelling covered with “pot-boilers,” whose unsalable qualities made them as ineffective in that capacity as they were in their pretensions to be regarded as works of art. Weems felt, as he surveyed the collection, that there must have been among the brethren an organized conspiracy to unload upon him the corners of the studios.
Among the other presents received were travelling-cases, which held nothing that anybody ever wants upon a journey; cheap spoons put into a case marked with the name of a first-class silversmith, with an intent to create a wrong impression respecting the quality of the wares; and a host of trifles, most of them completely useless, and all of them accounted by the bride and groom as so much spoil collected under the duress of a custom which is idiotic when it requires anything that is not a genuine expression of affection or esteem.