Selina struggling into her green dress, hurried in. Aunt Juanita was on a low chair changing her shoes with her bonnet still on. The effect, considering she'd taken off her dress, was startling. Uncle Bruce in his underwear, which ran around in stripes, sat on the bed and glared from out of the jungle of his hair and beard.
"You'll have to see if Marcus is anywhere in the house, Selina," from Aunt Juanita. "I can't do a thing with your Uncle Bruce."
"You've been a model and praiseworthy wife, Juanita, and I respect you for it," from Uncle Bruce. "You've never tried to do things with me. Damn my son's impertinence, does he think he can begin to do it now after all these years? I go to my telescope to get out my clothes and I take out a suit I do not recognize. And you tell me he's put it there in place of my own. That I'm to wear it. I'll be damned, he can be damned, we'll all be damned before I do. Have I ever interfered with him? Haven't I watched him going about in long hair and a waterproof cape he looked a durned fool in, and held my tongue? I've done my part by this wedding, too. I sent the lady my grandmother's pearls because you and he told me to, and wrote her a letter in addition. And I took him down to my vault box and gave him a bunch of securities, and when I found it was the wrong bunch, double in value, told him to keep it anyhow. I go to this wedding in the clothes I came in, since my others are missing, or I stay here as I am."
Selina had been desperately hooking her dress.
"Go find Marcus if he's here," said Aunt Juanita, who having buttoned her boots, now bethought her to untie and remove her bonnet.
Selina went and found Miss Boswell, serene and distinguished in her wedding array of silvery gray satin, and with her aid and that of the servants, Marcus was found, having arrived from the hotel with his bevy of newspaper friends, and betaken himself to the room given over to him.
When Selina returned with him, Uncle Bruce still in his striped underwear, had moved a big armchair under the gas and gotten out some documents from somewhere, and lit an evil-looking and smelling cigar, and dismissed the matter. Aunt Juanita had combed her hair and now was washing her face!
"Wear what you please, sir," said Marcus promptly. "Your dress clothes were sleek with age and misuse, but it was damned impertinent of me to interfere. I beg your pardon, sir, it was none of my business."
"The principle we as a family have always gone on," said Uncle Bruce. And getting up, he began to draw on the pepper and salt trousers he'd come to Eadston in. "You've got on a tie with flowing ends with evening dress, yourself, Marcus!" suddenly he paused to say. Uncle Bruce saw more than one thought for! "You've put it on to be in keeping with your bid for eccentricity. I only remark on it to let you know I hold my tongue as a matter of principle about other people's affairs, and not because I don't see 'em."