The old gentleman, who was quite short, sprang lightly upward, blew two long blasts, and the train began to slow. The Admiral opened the vestibule door and said:
"Come on! We'll have to jump."
Jump they did, and into some Eastern Shore mud which did not harmonize with the attire of either gentleman. As they floundered out of it, screened from the train by some scrubby bushes, the tug, which had heard the locomotive's stopping signal, blew three long blasts of her own whistle. Long before she steamed abreast of the part of the beach which the runaways had reached, the Admiral was waving his handkerchief so wildly that Jermyn insisted upon relieving him to spare him the pangs of a stiff shoulder and the danger of apoplexy.
[CHAPTER XIX.]
THE MISSING GUEST.
AS Trif was a prudent wife and housekeeper, she had been moaning to herself for days about the expense of the Southern trip. Nevertheless, she arranged for a lunch party regardless of expense, as befitted an occasion when two happy couples, newly made so, were to be her guests. She promised herself that she would pay for it by not buying a single new article of clothing, not even a new frock, for the coming season. She would economize in any and every way; she would let her house, furnished, for a few months, and take Trixy and Fenie and herself to some out-of-the-way place where everything was cheap, and the other boarders would not know her old clothes from the newest. Further, as she would have to send home for more money, she sat down and wrote an ecstatic confession to her husband, telling him that she really thought it her duty, as a member of society, to complete the matches which were as good as made between Harry and Fenie, Kate and Jermyn.
Then she sent to Jermyn such a note as only a great-hearted, good-hearted woman could write, after which she insisted on helping to array Kate as a queen should be dressed for her formal coronation. She was as earnest as she was sentimental, so she talked so strongly as well as romantically to Kate that the latter grew sweeter and handsomer every moment, until finally she felt as if the occasion would be one of consecration instead of a mere meeting with the man who already seemed a very old acquaintance.
Trif told her she looked like a goddess, a sacrifice, an angel, a queen—everything a good woman could be while trying to devote her love and life to a worthy man. Trif had been telling her, and Kate was in a condition of mind to believe it, that marriages were made in heaven, and despite all future ceremonies that might be necessary her obligations were already recorded above, and Kate rose to the dignity of the occasion, and looked sweeter and felt happier, although more humble and earnest than in all her life before, for were not all who were to be present quite near to her?—her brother, who seemed in the seventh heaven of happiness; Fenie, who appeared almost too beautiful, in her happiness and devotion, to be merely human; Trif, the woman who had known love for years and rejoiced in it with a nobility surpassing that of any other woman Kate had ever met; and Trixy—oh, Kate could take even Trixy to her heart. Mischief-making though the child had been, Trixy's hands and no others should strew flowers when the day came for Kate and Jermyn to be made husband and wife. What a heaven on earth this much-abused old world was, to be sure!