IX
The succeeding days brought one continuous round of simple pleasures. Christmas and the holidays followed hard upon the wedding, and New Year's Day being Sunday, Pert invited the members of the wedding party to the house for from Friday to the Monday following.
At this season of the year there was nothing of actual work to be done upon the place, and Checkers was free to hunt with the men or drive with the girls, as he elected.
Whether it be for the reason that "misery loves company," or for the much more probable and kindly reason that "our truest happiness lies in making others happy," it is certain that most young married couples have a very strong "weakness" for match-making. And Pert and Checkers were no exception to this rule.
They decided that Arthur's truest good demanded that he marry Sadie; and poor little Sadie showed but too plainly in what direction her happiness lay.
But in spite of Pert's well-laid plans to leave them in quiet corners together, in spite of her many little tactful suggestions, Arthur remained unresponsive. He was attentive in a perfunctory way, but that was all. And often Pert would blush to find him gazing at her with a wistful, far-away look in his eyes, which told more surely than words what was in his heart. In fact, Sadie timidly suggested to Pert one day that Arthur was always distrait and silent after seeing her and Checkers together; and that instead of making him desire a domestic little home of his own, it seemed to embitter and sour him.
So, after the house party Checkers settled down to serious life on a farm, and Pert busied herself with housekeeping, learning to cook from her neat old colored servant "Mandy," trying new dishes herself, and doing the thousand and one little things that go to make up "a woman's work," which 't is said "is never done"—"done," of course, in the sense of "finished."
And so the winter glided quickly into spring—the spring of '93; a year that many of us will long remember.
One evening Checkers unfolded to Pert a long-cherished scheme, which delighted her. This was nothing less than a plan to take her to Chicago in May to see the World's Fair. "We 'll call it our wedding trip, little girl," he said caressingly, "and we won't be gone but ten days or two weeks."