When the ceremony ended, and the little crowd under the live-oak trees broke up, Fenie and Harry, Kate and Jermyn, began to move slowly toward the hotel, while Trif and Trixy walked behind them. Suddenly, while no one else was talking, Trixy remarked:
"Mamma, dear; wouldn't it be nice if they all got married, and——"
"Sh—h—!"
Kate suddenly asked Jermyn why it was that so large a fort had only a single flag-staff, and Harry hastened to give Fenie the details of a lumber contract concerning which he had come South, and Fenie listened as intently as if she knew lumber from timber, or any other commodity.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
A SNATCH AT TIME'S FORELOCK.
BETWEEN the exhilarating effects of the breakfast-table chat with Fenie, and the furtive, embarrassed, yet roguish look which Fenie had worn for a fraction of a second, when Trixy had made her unexpected remark in the fort about marriage, Harry Trewman was the happiest youth in the State of Virginia.
Nevertheless, he did not forget his business duties or his business training. The lumber case at Norfolk had disturbed his dreams at night, and was now troubling his day-dreams; the best way to avoid any more annoyance was to hurry over to Norfolk and settle the business at once.
Besides, now seemed the proper time to come to a definite understanding with Fenie—an understanding of the kind frequently completed by the presentation of a ring containing a stone, preferably a diamond. Harry had seen in a Norfolk shop a ring, which he thought would entirely answer the purpose, and he would buy it that very morning. Before he started, however, he took the precaution to beg his sister, half shamefacedly, to keep all designing bachelors from Fenie for a few hours.