In came Paula, visibly excited, and in great haste. “Octave, Aunt Ruth says we are to go up stairs and put on our best dresses, for there is company coming. A lot of old Quaker Friends, and who do you think? Why, the great doctor and the great professor and his wife, and the village folks, and everybody you can think of. I knew you’d have to mend your frock, for you tore it the last time you had it on, so I thought I’d tell you right away.”
“Oh, bother! I hate company! I wanted Octave to help me with some problems. We haven’t had one single minute to study since the folks came home!” exclaimed Melville, peevishly.
“Well, I’ve borne that deprivation in an angelic spirit,” retorted Octave; who found sitting patiently to work out Melville’s incomprehensible problems a terrible tax upon her restless spirit.
“But Aunt Ruth beats me; she ought to be in a perfect fever of nervousness, but she is as calm—as calm!” said Melville, who had received many unusual visits from her during that morning. Visits which appeared to have no special object, but which were apparently intended as sympathetic,—that is, as far as Melville could understand them.
Soon after dinner the expected guests began to arrive; and even then Ruth was everywhere about the house, receiving her friends and showing them to the most comfortable seats in the great, old-fashioned parlor, which had been thrown open to the fresh September air, and from which a door opening into Melville’s sitting-room had been unlocked, for the first time in many years. His cot had been rolled to this doorway, and there he lay conversing with his revered professor, who had promptly appeared on the noon train.
The great surgeon and Uncle Fritz were deep in the discussion of a “beautiful case” which Fritz must be sure to see when he passed through London.
London! Was he going away to it soon? Octave felt her heart sink strangely; and she unconsciously clutched little Fritz’s hand so that he protested.
Then everybody came in from all the rooms where they had been wandering; even Rosetta, in a clean print gown, and Abry-ham in his Sunday clothes, and Luke, smelling of bear’s oil and pomatum. And they ranged themselves all around the place, so “fer all the world like a fun’ral” that Rosetta was seized then and there with a desire to weep. When she did so, with audible moans, it was high time to put an end to the—“Mystery.”
So, evidently, thought Uncle Fritz; for he arose and, crossing to Aunt Ruth’s side, held out his great hand invitingly.
Then she, looking like a sweet blush rose, wrapped in a cloak of soft gray moss, stood up and faced him; and before anybody could do much more than sigh their amazement, those two people had—married themselves!