"Nonsense!" The Philosopher coloured like a boy. "That girl——"
"Not that girl," explained the Skeptic. "The Old Lady. She has never ceased to ask after you whenever we have seen her or heard from her. As I remember, you presented her with a bunch of garden flowers as big as your head, and looked at her as if she were eighteen and the beauty she undoubtedly once was.—Well, well—a preacher! What has Rhodora become that she has blinded the eyes of a preacher? Not that their eyes are not easily blinded!"
"Why do you say 'preacher?'" inquired his wife. "Grandmother's letter says a young clergyman."
"He's no clergyman," insisted the Skeptic. "He's not even a minister. He's just a preacher—a raw youth, just out of college—knows as much about women as a puppy about elephant training. Rhodora probably sang a hymn at one of his meetings and finished him. Well, well—I suppose this means another wedding present?" He looked dubiously at Hepatica.
"It does, of course," she admitted.
"Send her a cut-glass punch-bowl," he suggested, preparing savagely to carve a plump, young duck. "Anything less adapted to the use of a preacher's family I can't conceive. And that's the main object in buying wedding gifts, according to my observation."
The day of Rhodora's wedding arrived, and we went down together to Grandmother's lovely old country home—a stately house upon the banks of a wide, frozen river. Our train brought us there two hours before the one set for the ceremony, and we found not only Grandmother but Rhodora and the Preacher in the fine old-time drawing-room to greet us. The wedding was to be a quietly informal one, and such of the other guests as had already arrived were in the room also, having a cup of tea before they should go upstairs to dress.
Rhodora herself was pouring the tea, and the Preacher was helping hand the cups about. It was a beautiful opportunity to observe the pair before their marriage.
Grandmother gave us the welcome only Grandmother knows how to give. In her own home she looks like a fair, little, old queen, receiving everybody's homage, yet giving so much kindness in return that one can never feel one's self out of debt to her hospitality. Her greeting to the Philosopher was an especially cordial one.
"I ventured to ask you," she said to him, "because I have always wanted to see you again—not merely because I have heard of you in the world where you are making a name for yourself. And I wanted, too, in justice to my granddaughter, to have you see her again."