CHAPTER NINETEEN
Selina's relatives, the Bruces, figured largely in what now followed, by not figuring therein at all. One always could count on a Bruce to do something unexpected.
It began with the absence of Marcus. Selina had not seen him since her return and had a feeling that perhaps she did not care to. She considered that she had grounds for still being indignant with him. The unworthy and the inconsiderate flourish undeservedly, however, as she reflected somewhat sorely. During the political campaign of a year ago, Marcus in a temporary associated-press capacity, had accompanied a presidential nominee and his party on their special car on an unprecedented tour through the South. This nominee was now the president of the United States, and about the time Selina was packing her trunk to come home from the South, Marcus was offered the post of consul to a group of islands in the bluest of semi-tropical seas. As Selina came up from Florida, Marcus had passed her somewhere on the way.
"He's gone to ask Pocahontas whether he wants the appointment or not," Aunt Juanita, stopping by to say howdy to Selina, explained to her and Mamma confidentially, "Of course you have grasped before this, Selina, that Pocahontas is going to marry Marcus."
Selina nodded. She had not brought herself to feel great enthusiasm on the subject even though she had been given the point of view of Miss 'Hontas to help her to it. And she did wish Aunt Juanita would take time to fix her clothes! Tall and ungroomed, the feather on her bonnet hung dejected by a thread, and three buttons were off her rusty shoe! Still as in the case of Marcus with his questionable manners, you never can tell. And Uncle Bruce, if possible, was the strangest, certainly the most unkempt of the three, and see too what had come to pass about him?
At about the same time the consulship was offered to Marcus, the home papers copied an interview from the Washington journals in which the name of Bruce figured gratifyingly. The personage of the interview was an English parliamentarian and historian, the Honorable Verily Blanke.
According to the Washington papers, this gentleman was reported as saying:
Perhaps I look forward as much as to any individual acquaintance I hope to make in your country, to my meeting with your Mr. Aurelius Bruce, whom I regard as one of the greatest living authorities on the interpretative history of the American constitution. In the course of my correspondence with this gentleman, at the time I was occupied with those chapters in my history of popular government dealing with your constitution, I promised myself if ever I should be in the United States of America, the pleasure and personal gratification of a meeting with this distinguished and profound jurist. From the nature and the variety of the authorities he has been able to point me to, affording me the desired passages from his own shelves, when these authorities were not to be met with readily by me elsewhere, I should rank his personal library devoted to American law and jurisprudence, as one of the notable ones of the country.
As Selina said when she read this in the daily paper, truly you cannot foretell!