"You'll come; won't you, dear Jane?" pleaded Mrs. Belknap, seizing the auspicious moment.
"I'm afraid Mary MacGrotty would——"
"She's gone, thank Heaven!" exclaimed Mrs. Belknap with a shudder. "I haven't a soul in the house."
"And I can't cook, you know," murmured Jane teasingly, as she hid her blushing face on the infant's small shoulders.
"Don't rub it in, Jane," advised Mr. Belknap urgently. "We'll have a caterer and everything shipshape. Later, though, when you're back from England you'll do well to let Madge here give you some cooking lessons. Buster and I would have starved to death long ago if we hadn't been able to keep our cook; wouldn't we, old fellow?" And he tossed his son and heir high above his head amid a burst of infant exuberance.
And so it was finally settled. The excellent Bertha Forbes handed over her official duties to an underling for a whole week, while she shopped and sewed and fetched and carried for Jane with an untiring devotion, which earned that small person's lasting gratitude and friendship. On the day of the simple home wedding Miss Forbes stood up, tall and grenadier-like, bearing the bride's bouquet, with so uncompromising an air and manner that Master Belknap actually desisted from three several pieces of mischief while he gazed solemnly at her with large, round eyes.
When the last flutter of pearl-gray veil and white handkerchief had faded from view on the deck of the retreating steamer, Miss Forbes wiped her eyes openly. "I'm glad she's gone," she said sternly. "She ought never to have come."
"If Miss Jane Aubrey-Blythe had not entered this port with five thousand dollars of lace upon her person, she would not now be leaving it under such happy auspices," observed Mr. Belknap mildly. "And that, Miss Forbes, would be on the whole, a regrettable circumstance; don't you agree with me?"
"Hum!" said Bertha Forbes, rather shamefacedly, "I bought in some of that very lace at a customhouse sale. It was that which trimmed her wedding dress. I thought"—firmly—"that it was no more than right."