There was a general movement to the dining-room, but Tom paused long enough to say with mock formality: “Miss Wayne, Mr. John Galbraith.”
“Oh!” ejaculated the girl, growing pink with excitement. “Are you Hildegarde’s Jack?”
The sunburnt man looked mystified a moment, and then with sudden daring, “Is your name Hildegarde?” he said.
This was on the twenty-fourth of September. Six days later she began a letter to her friend.
“Oh, Hildegarde! Hildegarde! You’re quite right. He’s the most wonderful person in the world, and I hope you don’t mind, but we are engaged to be married—Jack Galbraith and I! It turns out that he’s an old friend of Marion’s family, and after she married my brother, when Jack came to see them last winter, Tom liked him awfully—of course everybody does that—and since then they’ve all three been great friends.
“And one of the first things he asked me when he heard Tom came from near Valdivia, was all about you—I mean your father. He says such beautiful things about your father, and how kind he was when Jack was a poor, forlorn, little boy. But oh, Hildegarde! he’s the most glorious person now you ever saw in your life. The old faded photograph isn’t a bit like him. I am sending you a new one, and that isn’t like him, either. But I am going to get a silver frame for it and I shall be dreadfully hurt if you don’t put it on the altar-table, with the old locket and the roses—if you’re really glad of our happiness you’ll even burn a joss now and then for our sake. I’m miserable when I think how little good any photograph of such a person is! You can’t imagine what it’s like when he smiles. All the whole earth smiles, too. I adore him when he smiles—and when he doesn’t. I adore him every minute, except when he talks about Franz Josef Land, or something disgusting like that. But then he doesn’t do it much—never, except when Mr. Borisoff is here. Mr. Borisoff is a man I can’t stop to tell you about, only I don’t like him, and I shall let Jack know some day that I don’t think he is a good influence.
“But I began to say that you mustn’t think Jack is the least solemn as his letters used to sound and as the pictures make out. In fact, he began our acquaintance by flirting quite desperately, but he says it wasn’t flirting at all. He meant all those things! He says they were a profession of faith upon a miraculous revelation (that’s me—I’m the miraculous revelation!), and it only sounded flirtatious because I didn’t realize, as he did, that we had been waiting for one another.
“He’s waited a good deal longer than I have, poor Jack! He’s more than twelve years older than I am; do you remember how you used to throw that in my face? But it doesn’t matter the least in the world. Besides, you’d never think he was so old—he’s such a darling; and he talks like a poet, and a painter, and an archangel, all rolled into one. I am so wildly happy I can’t write a proper letter, only I do want you to know that your mother is mistaken, as we always thought. Jack is a saint—simply a saint. When my father behaved quite horridly, and said he couldn’t have me marrying a man who went away for two or three years on long, scientific expeditions, Jack said he wouldn’t do it any more, though I think it cost him something to say that. He was quite silent for hours afterward, and didn’t even notice I’d done my hair differently. And that horrid Mr. Borisoff was in such a rage. He didn’t say anything, but oh! he looked. But now he’s gone away, thank goodness, and I shall try to make Jack not ever see him again. Then another thing, just to show you what a perfect angel Jack is. My mother said I was delicate and too young, and things like that, and she got father to agree that I was only eighteen and was the weakling of the family, and they made up their wicked old minds that I mustn’t be married right away as Jack and I had arranged. And what do you think? Jack said he would wait for me? A whole year! I cried when they settled that, but wasn’t he a seraph? Fathers and mothers are very selfish; I shall not treat my daughters like that.
“How Jack and I will ever get through a year of waiting is more than either of us know. I am not coming home till the first week in December, and Jack’s coming to us for Christmas. And then you’ll see him! I hope you are pleased that I’m going to marry the man we’ve talked so much about. It seems like another bond, doesn’t it? How is Louis Cheviot? I can forgive him now for always liking you best. I can’t imagine how I ever looked at him. Oh, Hildegarde, Jack is a perfect—well, I never heard the word that was beautiful enough to describe him.
“Good-by, I hear him now out in the garden. Jack is the most perfect whistler.