Old Hurricane did not hear her. Starting up with the document in his hand, he rushed from the room and went and shut himself up in his own study.
"I vow, some widow has offered to marry him," said Cap, to herself.
Old Hurricane did not come to dinner, nor to supper. But after supper, when Capitola's wonder was at its climax, and while she was sitting by the little wood fire that that chilly evening required, Old Hurricane came in, looking very unlike himself, in an humble, confused, deprecating, yet happy manner, like one who had at once a mortifying confession to make, and a happy secret to tell.
"Cap," he said, trying to suppress a smile, and growing purple in the face.
—"Oh, yes! You've come to tell me, I suppose, that you're going to put a step-aunt-in-law over my head, only you don't know how to announce it," answered Capitola, little knowing how closely she had come to the truth; when, to her unbounded astonishment, Old Hurricane answered:
"Yes, my dear, that's just it!"
"What! My eyes! Oh, crickey!" cried Cap, breaking into her newsboy's slang, from mere consternation.
"Yes, my dear, it is perfectly true!" replied the old man, growing furiously red, and rubbing his face.
"Oh! oh! oh! Hold me! I'm 'kilt!'" cried Cap, falling back in her chair in an inextinguishable fit of laughter, that shook her whole frame. She laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks. She wiped her eyes and looked at Old Hurricane, and every time she saw his confused and happy face she burst into a fresh paroxysm that seemed to threaten her life or her reason.
"Who is the happy—Oh, I can't speak! Oh, I'm 'kilt' entirely!" she cried, breaking off in the midst of her question and falling into fresh convulsions.