The angel of his presence; and Gabriel the Acadian

by Grace Livingston Hill; Edith M. Nicholl

The visit of the “ladye of high degree” to America was delayed by wind and tide and circumstance until the late fall, and in the meantime the people of America had not stood still for her coming.

Among other things that had been done, there had been put up and fully equipped a sort of club-house belonging to the Forest Hill Mission. It does not take long to carry out such schemes when there are two earnest persons with determination and ability to work like John Stanley and Margaret Manning.

The money for the scheme had come in rapidly and from unexpected sources. Margaret declared that every dollar was an answer to prayer.

The house itself was perfectly adapted for the carrying out of their plans of work. There were reading-rooms and parlors where comfort and a certain degree of refinement prevailed. There was a gymnasium in which the privileges and days were divided equally between men and women, and where thorough instruction was given. There were rooms in which various classes were carried on evenings for those who had no chance otherwise, and there were even a few rooms for young men or young women, homeless and forlorn, where they could get good board for a time, and the whole was presided over by a motherly, gray-haired woman and her husband, whose hearts were in the work, and whose good common sense made them admirably fitted for such a position.

But amid all these plans and preparations for better work John Stanley had found opportunity to speak to Margaret Manning the words which had won her consent to make his home bright by her presence and his heart glad with her love.

Their wedding cards had traveled across the ocean, passing midway the steamer that carried a letter from the “ladye of high degree,” saying that she was about to embark on her trip to America and rather demanding John Stanley’s time and attention during her stay near his home. She had been used to this in the days when he was near her home, and he had been only too glad to be summoned then.

His letter waited for him several days while he was away on a short business trip, and it came about that he opened it but three days before his wedding day. He smiled as he read her orders. He was to meet her at the steamer on the fifteenth. Ah! that was the day when he hoped to be a hundred miles away from New York, speeding blissfully along with Margaret by his side. He drew a sigh of relief as he reached for pen and paper and wrote her a brief note explaining that he was sorry not to be able to show her the courtesies he had promised, but that he would be away on his wedding trip at the time. He afterward added an invitation from his mother, and closed the note and forgot all about the matter.

And so it was that the “ladye of high degree,” instead of being met with all the devotion she had expected,—and which she had intended to exact to its utmost,—found only a brief note with a paltry invitation to his wedding reception. She bit her lips in vexation and spent a disagreeable day in a New York hotel, making all those who had to do with her miserable. Then she hunted up the names of other acquaintances in America, noted the date of that reception, and made up her mind to make her haughty best of it; at least, when she returned home there was the laird and the earl and the poor duke, if worst came to worst.

The Stanley home was alight from one end to the other, and flowers and vines did their best to keep up the idea of the departing summer indoors that night when John Stanley brought home his lovely bride.

It was a strange gathering and a large one. There were present of New York’s best society the truest and best of men and women, whose costumes and faces showed that their purses and their culture were equally deep. And there were many people, poor and plain, in their best clothes it is true, but so different from the others that one scarcely knew which costume was more out of place, that of the rich or of the poor.