Bravely did the blushing Sam pass through the ordeal, and then Alec and Frank, in a way that seemed to come quite natural to them, saluted in a good old-fashioned way the two fair ladies who had come into their young lives and were much in their minds.
“Sure,” said Sam, “that’s not bad medicine to take, at all, at all.”
At this there was a great laugh, for Sam had blushed and stammered and acted as though it were an ordeal of great solemnity. There was a lot of fun and pleasantry for the next hour or so among these happy young people, while the older ones were busy looking after matters pertaining to the feast. Frank and Alec entertained the young ladies’ friends with the latest news that had come in by the Christmas packet. Sam, with Wenonah and Roderick, played all sorts of pranks all over the house. When later arrivals came in and gravely kissed, not only the elderly ladies of the party, but also the beautiful young maidens, Alec and Frank’s faces were studies that very much amused Sam.
“Indeed,” he afterward said, “I thought it was going to be pistols and coffee for four, and may I be there to see the fun.”
As the tender passion had not yet struck him, he could thus afford to be amused at the ebullitions of jealousy that rolled so ominously into the young hearts of the chums. “Black as thunderclouds were their faces,” he said, “as they saw these sweet young ladies, whom they in their callow affections would already wholly monopolise, kissed by a dozen different gentlemen during the day.”
“How do you like ‘O-jimmy-catch-the-cow’ day, or whatever you call it?” he said to Frank, as he saw him glowering at a Hudson Bay officer who had just kissed his sweetheart.
“I don’t like it at all,” Frank replied, with gritted teeth.
“You mean you don’t like it for other folks,” replied Sam. “You took your medicine yourself very well, if I am a good judge, especially when you so lovingly displayed your osculatory skill on the sweet lips of peerless Rachel, whom that young prig of a Hudson Bay Company’s clerk is now approaching.”
“I’ll fight him,” said Frank, and his hot breath and clinched lists showed that he would have loved to pitch in just then.
“No, you will not,” said Sam. “Hot-headed Englishman though you are, you are too much of a gentleman to make a row in this clergyman’s house, and about his young daughter. But, Frank, I will give you a bit of comfort. While the beautiful Rachel gave you her sweet lips to kiss, she only turned her rosy cheek to all the other fellows, me included. So now no more of your English, ‘I’ll punch your ’ead for you.’”