They were still laughing over the unexpectedness of the letter when Aunt Constance came in, and they showed it to her.
“Good!” she exclaimed, dwelling longer upon the inscription than upon the letter itself. “I think you’re quite sensible, and I’ll arrange the finest wedding for Agnes that has ever occurred in the Elliston family. You must give me at least a couple of months, though. When is it to come off? Soon, I suppose?”
Carefully and patiently they explained the stand they had taken. At first she thought they were joking, and it took considerable reiteration on their part for her to understand that they were not.
“I declare I have no patience with you!” she avowed. “Of all the humdrum, prosaic people I ever saw, you are the very worst! There is no romance in you. You’re as cool about it as if marriage were a commercial partnership. Oh, Dan!” and she called her husband from the library. “Now what do you think of this?” she demanded, and explained the ridiculous attitude of the young people.
“Great!” decided Uncle Dan. “Allow me to congratulate you,” and he shook hands heartily with both Agnes and Bobby, whereat Aunt Constance denounced him as being a sordid soul of their own stripe and went to bed in a huff. She got up again, however, when she heard Agnes retire to her own room for the night, and came in to wrestle with that young lady in spirit. She found Agnes, however, obdurate in her content, and ended by becoming an enthusiastic supporter of the idea. “Although I did have my heart so set on a fine wedding,” she plaintively concluded. “I have been planning it for ages.”
“Just keep on planning, auntie,” replied Agnes. “No doubt you will acquire some brilliant new ideas before the time comes.”
So this utterly placid courtship went on in its old tranquil way, with Bobby a constant two and three nights a week visitor to the Elliston home, and with the two young people discussing business more frequently than anything else; for Bobby had learned to come to Agnes for counsel in everything. Just now his chief burden of conversation was the letting of the new waterworks contract, which, with public sentiment back of him, he had fought off until after the Stone administration had ended. Hamilton Ferris, an old polo antagonist of his, represented one of the competing firms as its president, and Bobby had been most anxious that he should be the successful bidder, as was Agnes; for Bobby had brought Ferris to dinner at the Ellistons and to call a couple of times during his stay in the city, and all of the Ellistons liked him tremendously. Bobby was quite crestfallen when the opening of the bids proved Ferris to be the second lowest man.
“I’ve tried hard enough for it,” declared Ferris during a final dinner at the Ellistons that night. “There isn’t much doing this year, and I figured closer than anybody in my employ would dared to have done. In view of my estimate I can not for the life of me see how your local company overbid us all by over a million dollars.”
“It is curious,” admitted Bobby, still much puzzled.
“It’s rather unsportsmanlike in me to whine,” resumed Ferris, “but I am bound to believe that there is a colored gentleman in the woodpile somewhere.”