“Hepsey Burke, for all your molasses and the little bit of vinegar you say you keep by you, ‘there are no flies on you’ as Nickey would put it.”
At which sally Jonathan slapped his knee, and ejaculated:
“No! there ’aint, by gum! There ’aint no flies on Hepsey, if I do say it myself.”
At which proprietory speech Hepsey wagged her head warningly, saying, as they left—“There’s no downin’ him, these days; I’m sure I don’t know what’s come over the man.”
On their way home Jonathan was urgent for fixing the day. 310
“You said you’d marry me right there and then, if the meetin’ came your way, now you know you did, Hepsey,” he argued. “So if we say to-morrow––”
But though Hepsey would never go back on a promise, she protested against too summary an interpretation of it, and insisted on due time to prepare herself for her wedding. So a day was set some two months hence.
Meanwhile, Sylvester Bascom’s truer and pristine nature blossomed forth in the sunnier atmosphere around him, and after he had delivered himself of his feelings to the Maxwells, in a visit which he paid them next day at their nomadic quarters, he begged leave to put the rectory in full repair before he handed it over to the parish, and the Maxwells returned to it.
And he was better than his word; for, with Hepsey and Virginia accompanying her, he insisted on Mrs. Betty taking a trip to the city a few days later for the purpose of selecting furnishings of various kinds dear to the hearts of housekeepers—Hepsey absorbing a share of the time in selecting her “trousseau.”
Meanwhile, in due course the rectory was made a new place, inside and out, and a few weeks after their return the transformed house, repainted inside and 311 out, papered and curtained and charmingly fitted with new furniture, was again occupied by the Maxwells.