Crusoe in New York, and other tales

by Edward Everett Hale

And so it was settled. And the house was furnished again, and Betsey Boll and old Miss Tucker came back to work in the kitchen again, and old Bryan's bank account was better than it ever was. And on the 2d of April he went to Cincinnati to sit as V. P. of the C. and T. R. R. Co., and to draw his first quarter's salary.

And poor Horace never set his eyes on poor Hester's pale face.

And all the village knew that on the 15th of May Hester Bryan was to be married to the Duke de Alcantara. And Lucy Lander surrendered so far from the general tone of opinion of the girls as to agree to be a bridemaid. She had a splendid dress sent to her from St. Louis. Jane Forsyth and the other girls said they would burn at the stake first. But Lucy said—and I think she was right—that Hester had a right to have one friend near her to the last.

The wedding was to be at St. Louis at St. Jude's Church. The boys said it was Judas Iscariot's Church, but this was their mistake. They said the Duke de Alcantara was afraid to be married in Hester's home. This, I think, is probable. The arrangements were left mostly to "the Duke" and to old Bryan's sister, Mrs. Goole—a skinny, wiry, disagreeable person, of a very uncertain age, who had made herself so unpleasant to all the neighbors on her visit to her brother, many years ago, that she had never come again till now. Now that he needed some womenfolk, Mrs. Goole was summoned to the rescue.

CHAPTER II.

SOLD.

On the 14th of May, the Pullman palace, Cleopatra, was waiting on a side-track at London, ready to take its first trip. It had been chartered, John the porter said, by a chap from St. Louis, who was going to take quite a party there. A bridal party it was. How large the party was to be, the porter did not know, though it was important enough to him. But he had dusted the new plush, clean as it was, and had wiped off the wood-work, though he could not stain his cloth on it.

Presently the party came, headed by a dark gentleman talking to the station-master. The station-master introduced him to the conductor as Mr. De Alcantara. The eagle eye of the porter saw that there were twelve in the party. He waited for no introduction, but seized the hand-baggage and distributed it to the different sections. Meanwhile the party entered the car.

But though the porter had assigned to each of their grandeurs a section of four seats, they did not mount each a separate throne. On the contrary, a pleasant-looking young lady, who might perhaps be the bride, and two children, sat down in the middle of the car. The rest were distributed according to their different degrees of lack of acquaintanceship.