[CHAPTER XXI.]
APRIL SHOWERS.
A HAPPIER couple than Fenie and Harry could not be found in all New York. This must be true, for both of them said so one evening while they were the only occupants of Trif's cozy parlor, while Trif and her husband were out, making a short call.
Harry had just told Fenie that while he was very happy about his sister and Jermyn, because he thought them specially suited to each other, he was also very sorry for them, for naturally love could not be so delightful to Jermyn as to him, for was not the officer at least ten years the older. Ten years, to Harry, seemed time enough to transform a young man into a person of middle age.
Fenie said she never would have mentioned such things if Harry had not begun it, but she was dreadfully sorry for Kate, for the dear girl, being much older than she—six or seven years older—could not know the bliss of youth that gives itself entirely to thoughts of love.
Harry did not like to hear any allusions made to the age of his sister, for Kate had always seemed to him, until he met Fenie, the embodiment of everything girlishly delightful. Was she not the merriest romp of the family? Was it not she who always brought him out of his brown studies? Did she not play with the younger children as if she herself was still in short dresses?
By a natural coincidence, Jermyn and Kate, only a few squares away, were congratulating themselves that they were not young things like Harry and Fenie. They had seen much of the world; they knew men and women well; they had gone through many illusions from start to finish, but now they had found each other, the world might move on in its orbit, or out of its orbit, with no end of trouble to all concerned—except them. They were one in soul and purpose for all time, and, they devoutly hoped, for all eternity.
About this time a bell rang somewhere in the house, but neither of them heeded it. Why should they? Were they not sitting and looking as if Jermyn had merely dropped in for an evening call? Kate was pretending to do some alleged "fancy work," and Jermyn was admiring the movements of her pretty hands, and wishing that his pay or his prospects were so good that the aforesaid pretty hands might never have to do anything more exacting or less becoming, and thinking he had been a brute to propose to such a woman when he had only his pay, nearly two thousand a year, and a thousand or two dollars he had saved, when the current of his thoughts was disturbed by the appearance of Trixy, who stood before him in a waterproof cloak and a face covered with tears.
"Trixy!" exclaimed Jermyn. "What has happened to you?"