It was one blessed facility of this remarkable woman that she generally came to the full conviction of the axiom that "whatever is, is right," and took up and patronized anything that would succeed in spite of her best efforts to prevent it.
So, in announcing the double wedding to her fashionable acquaintance, she placed everything, as the popular saying is, best foot foremost.
Mr. Fellows was a young man of fine talents, great industry and elegant manners, a great favorite in society, and likely to take the highest rank in his profession. Alice had refused richer offers—she might perhaps have done better in a worldly point of view, but it was purely a love match, &c., &c. And Mr. St. John, a young man of fine family and independent fortune, who might command all the elegancies of life, was going to live in a distant and obscure quarter, to labor in his work. These facts brought forth, of course, bursts of sympathy and congratulation, and Aunt Maria went off on the top of the wave.
Eva had but done her aunt justice when she told her mother that Aunt Maria would be all the more amiable for the firm stand which the young wife had taken against any interference with her family matters. It was so. Aunt Maria was as balmy to Eva as if that discussion had never taken place, though it must be admitted that Eva was a very difficult person to keep up a long quarrel with.
But just at this hour, when the whole family were at her feet, when it was her voice that decided every question, when she knew where everything was and was to be, and when everything was to be done, she was too well pleased to be unamiable. She was the spirit of the whole affair, and she plumed herself joyously when all the callers at the house said to Mrs. Van Arsdel, "Dear me! what would you do, if it were not for your sister?"
Verily she had her reward.
[CHAPTER LII.]
EVA'S CONSULTATIONS.
"Now see here," said Jim, coming in upon Eva as she sat alone in her parlor, "I've got something on my mind I want to talk with you about. You see, Alice and I are to be married at the same time with Angie and St. John."