"Yes, Mother! I am coming directly."
It was late, though she scarce knew it. Gathering her things, she brought the chairs into the house.
CHAPTER IV
I
Week after week sped by, summer ripened into fall, and fall faded into winter. All was monotony: the bleak winter season, the shorter days, the longer evenings, the city settling down into a period of seclusion and social inaction. There would be little of gayety this year. No foreign visitors would be entertained by the townsfolk. There would be no Mischienza to look forward to. It would be a lonely winter for the fashionable element, with no solemn functions, with no weekly dancing assemblies, with no amateur theatricals to rehearse. Indeed were it not for the approaching marriage of Peggy Shippen to the Military Governor, Philadelphia would languish for want of zest and excitement.
The wedding took place at the home of the bride on Fourth Street. The élite of the city, for the most part Tories, were in attendance. Mrs. Anne Willing Morris, Mrs. Bingham—all the leaders were there. So were Marjorie, John Anderson, Stephen, the Chews and Miss Franks from New York. The reception was brilliant, eclipsing anything of its kind in the history of the social life of the city, for Mrs. Shippen had vowed that the affair would establish her definitely and for all time the leader of the fashionable set of the town.
The center of attraction was of course Peggy; and she carried herself well, enduring the trying ordeal with grace and composure. And if one were to judge by the number and the quality of the gifts which loaded down one whole room, or by the throng which filled the house to overflowing, or by the motley crowd which surged without, impatient for one last look at the bride as she stepped into the splendid coach, a more popular couple was never united in matrimony. It was a great day for all concerned, and none was more happy nor more radiant than Peggy as she sat back in the coach and looked into the face of her husband and sighed with that contentment and complacency which one experiences in the possession of a priceless gem.
Their homecoming, after the brief honeymoon, was delightful. No longer would they live in the great slate roof house on Second Street at the corner of Norris Alley, but in the more elegant old country seat in Fairmount, on the Schuylkill,—Mount Pleasant. Since Arnold had purchased this great estate and settled it immediately upon his bride, subject of course to the mortgage, its furnishings and its appointments were of her own choice and taste.