As for Uncle Bruce, Mamma called him in as he came by of mornings, with his big bushy-haired head and untidy beard and his mummified and scholarly little trotting body, and brushed him off and tidied him up and retied his old black string cravat, and started him on again. Whereat if he had a book, it being his way to proceed along the streets with his nose and his spectacled eyes within the covers of some abstruse volume, he was as like as not to proceed indefinitely at his little dog-trot speed in whatsoever line started on, the levee and the river, it was said, on more than one occasion bringing him up. Uncle Bruce was a lawyer and Selina was told that he was an authority, but there was small comfort to her young and innocent soul in that in the face of his more salient characteristics.
Cousin Marcus, their son, did editorial paragraphs on the newspapers and was clever, but then you never knew what he might be besides, being all of Aunt Juanita and Uncle Bruce and himself together. If he was asked to come at eight he would stroll round at ten, and if one wanted to close the house at twelve, Marcus would produce his cigarettes—he was the only person in town to use them and was looked on askant therefore—and monologue with brilliancy till one. He was a law unto himself and over-rode your laws. Now Selina yearned secretly and passionately, and she feared almost unworthily, to be considered correct and proper, and this, moreover, was an occasion for that charmingly correct person, Miss Pocahontas Boswell. Auntie remembered now, too, just who the Boswells were. She was sure that as a girl she had spent a night at their even then old brick home at Eadston in its setting of quaint garden. Selina was uneasy as it was, over this conversazione business of Maud's, and if the truth be told, always winced at her relatives, the Bruces.
"No," she said, and firmly for once in the face of Maud, "I don't think I want Marcus."
"Then who—-?" began Maud, and stopped. The same thought had occurred at this point, was recurring to each of them, to four of them that is, Amanthus not knowing the person in question this time.
A new assistant rector at Selina's church had achieved a notable popularity, and of late these friends of hers, with the exception of Amanthus, had been accompanying her to services whenever they could be spared from their own. Perhaps they all blushed a bit now under detection.
"Why not the Reverend Mr. Thomas Wingham if he'll come?" avowed Maud stoutly despite the general abashment. "It's entirely for Miss Boswell we're considering him?"
As yet Selina was the only one who had met the gentlemen, he having called upon her household in the performance of his parochial duties. Driven thus into a corner by Maud, there was no reason why he should not be invited. "I'll ask Mamma," she conceded.
This person approved, and accordingly the invitation to him went the next day in Mamma's lady-like and running hand, upon her visiting card. It was hard to reconcile her being Aunt Juanita's sister, though to be sure they did have different mothers.
To Meet
Miss Pocahontas Boswell
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