"Is that all?" said Psyche, with her pretty laugh. "Why, darling, if it were to sweep the street-crossing,—as in that funny story you told us,—I would sweep too. If it were to keep a gambling-table, you would not have asked me to marry you. It is something honorable, that I know, because you are my own Edward. Why need I know anything more?"
And he kissed her, and she kissed him; and they went home to his little lunch; and then the express swept by, with Jim Fisk in uniform, as it happened, in a palace-car. And so Edward Ross went to Boston and made ready for his wedding.
CHAPTER II.
And a perfect wedding it was. I doubt if Painted Post remembers a prettier wedding or a prettier bride. And in that same express train Mr. E. Ross and his pretty bride swept off to New York, and so to Boston; and there he took her to the first sight of her pretty home.
How pretty it was! It was in Roxbury, so it was half country; and there was a pretty garden, with a little greenhouse such as Psyche had always longed for. Nay, there was even a fern-house, with just the ferns she loved, and with those other Himalaya ferns which he had talked of on that lovely first day of all. And there was a perfect grand piano, of a tone so sweet, and only one piece of music on the open rack, and that was the Mercadante of the first evening. And when they went upstairs, Psyche's own dressing-room was papered with the same paper which her pretty room had at her old home, and the carpet on the floor was the same, and every dear picture of her girlhood's collections was duplicated; and just where the cage of her pretty bullfinch, Tom, had hung, there hung just such a cage. Why, it was her cage, and her Tom was in it!
For Psyche and Edward had spent a night and a day in New York, that she might see Mr. Stewart's pictures and Mr. Johnson's; but Edward's office-boy, who had been left at Painted Post especially that he might bring the bullfinch, had taken a later train, indeed, but had come through without stopping.
And when they went into Edward's little den, it had but two pictures: one was Psyche's portrait, and the other was that miserable little first picture of the Hoosac Hills.
And then such a happy life began for these young people! No, Psyche did not find housekeeping hard. She had been the Cinderella at Mr. Verney's house too long for that. Now that she was the mistress of servants, she knew how to be kind to them and to enter into their lives. As Mrs. Wells says, "she tried the Golden Rule" with them. She loved them, and they loved her. And Edward was always devising ways to systematize the housekeeping and make it easier. Every morning he worked in his study for two hours, and she "stepped round" for an hour, and then lay on the lounge for an hour, reading by herself. Then he and she had two golden hours together. They made themselves boy and girl again. Two days in the week they painted with the water-colors; and Psyche really passed her master, for her eye for color was, oh! much better than his. Two days they worked at their music together—worked, not played. Two days they read together, he to her or she to him. And after lunch he always took his nap; and then, if it were cool enough, the horses came round, and he took Psyche off on one of the beautiful drives of Brookline or Milton or Newton or distant Needham; and she learned the road so well and learned to drive so well that she would take him as often as he took her. And at five they were at home, and at six Psyche's charming little dinner was served, always so perfectly; and then at eight o'clock he always kissed her, and said, "Good-by, sweet; now I must go out a little while. Do not think of sitting up for me." And then Psyche wrote her letters home or read a while; and at ten she went to bed, and fell asleep, wondering how she could have lived before she was so happy.
And in the morning her husband was always asleep at her side. He slept so heavily that she would try to get up and dress without his knowing it. But he always did know. And because he could dress quicker than she, he would put on his heavy Persian dressing-robe, after he had plunged his head into cold water, and while she "did her hair" he would read her "Amadis of Gaul," or the "Arabian Nights," or "Ogier the Dane," or the "Tales of the Round Table," till he saw she was within five minutes of being done. Then he would put down the book—yes, though Oriana were screaming in the arms of a giant—and he would run and dress himself, and they would run a race to see which should first reach the piazza and give to the other the first morning-glory.
And then would come another happy day, like and yet unlike to yesterday.