“I thought I had told you. You’ll be sure to call soon, won’t you? No. 46 Beekman Place.”
“Now, mum’s the word,” proceeded Mr. Flint.
“I don’t want you to breathe a syllable of this business to your sweetheart. Lead her to suppose that you’re going to some Purgatorial summer hotel; and then enjoy her surprise when she spies Beacon Rock. Oh, yes, I’ll call and pay her my respects—likely enough some night this week. Good-by. God bless you.”
Mr. Flint called, pursuant to his promise. On the stoop, as he was leaving, he clapped Arthur upon the shoulder, and cried, “By George, my boy, your Jewess is a jewel!”
Three days later came a paper parcel, addressed to Mrs. Lehmyl. It contained a small purple velvet box. To the outside of the box was attached a card, bearing the laconic device, “Sparks from a Flint.” Inside, upon a cushion of lavender silk lay a gold breastpin, from the center of which a cluster of wondrous diamonds shot prismatic rays. It was the sole bit of jewelry that adorned Ruth’s wedding-gown.
“Immediately after the ceremony,” says Hetzel, in a letter written at the time, “they got into a hack, and were driven to the Fall River boat. We, who were left behind, crossed the street and assembled upon the loggia. There we waited till the Bristol hove in sight down the river. Then, until it had disappeared behind Blackwell’s Island, there was much waving of handkerchiefs between the travelers—whom we could make out quite clearly, leaning against the rail—and us poor stay-at-homes. Afterward, Mrs. Ripley and Mrs. Hart adapted their handkerchiefs to other purposes.”
A week elapsed before the bride and groom were heard from. Eventually Hetzel got a voluminous missive. Portions of it read thus:
“In Boston, as our train didn’t leave till noon, we sought the Decorative Art Rooms, and spent an hour or so coveting the pretty things that they are full of. At the depot I had a slight unpleasantness with the potentate from whom I bought our tickets—(confound the insolence of these railroad officials! Why doesn’t some ingenious Yankee contrive an automaton by which they may be superseded?)—but despite it, we got started comfortably enough, and were set down at Portsmouth promptly at three o’clock. She enjoyed the drive in an open carriage through the quaint old New England town immensely; but when we had reached the open country, and were being whisked over bridges, down leafy lanes, across rugged pasture lands, on our way to New Castle, her pleasure knew no bounds. There is something peculiarly refreshing in this keen New Hampshire air, compounded as it is of pine odors and the smell of the sea, and something equally refreshing in this homely New Hampshire landscape, with its thorns and thistles growing alongside daisies and wild roses.
’The locust dinned amid the trees;
The fields were high with corn,’