He sat with his eyes fixed on the bottom of the boat.
An elderly couple were standing among the rashes. They regarded him with a friendly and companionable smile. They seemed to offer him the "middling lot" that the sage and poet have called the best and safest. "No hazardous and complicated relationships," they seemed to say; "no struggle over dead men's dollars, no swamping of self-respect in ill-got gains; only our daughter—"
George pressed his forehead confusedly and raised his eyes to get his bearings; the late afternoon sun dazzled him with its level beams. He saw a house set high among the trees; and on its porch, amidst a tangle of bittersweet, a girl was standing. He shaded his eyes; it was as if she waved a handkerchief at him. Presently she strolled to the brow of the bank.
"Glad to see you," she called; "we have just driven over."
It was Jessie Bradley.
[XVI]
Cornelia McNabb became Mrs. Barton Brainard during the first week in August. Neither of the pair was inclined to wait, and neither had such a circle of friends as to make a midsummer wedding less preferable than a later one.
The wedding took place in church—as Cornelia had intimated to Ogden. She was not disposed to let false delicacy clog the heels of success, and she had her way. They were married in the daytime, as a partial concession to the social inexperience of one father and the social indifference of the other. The young men of the bank were drawn on freely; Ogden served as an usher—as Cornelia had requested. Adrian Valentine supported Burt at the chancel-rail, and gave some friendly counsel as to details at both church and house.