"Is he married?" Miss Cis asked a heap quicker than she had asked who.
"No, and not likely to be," Julius answered, still looking over the letter absent-mindedly.
"The name sounds good," Miss Cis commenced, her eyes sparkling. "I never heard anything Scotchier. Something tells me he must be my ideal."
"Then 'something' must be telling you a lie," Julius said laughing, "for he couldn't be any woman's ideal. He is very real. An old bachelor, thirty-seven years, stern and precise; and he considers every woman on earth as a frivolous and unnecessary evil."
"The kind of man I adore," Miss Cis said joyfully, though anybody that knew her well could tell she was fooling. "My life will be a blank until he comes!"
"It would be a blankety-blank if you had to live with him, for you are the kind of woman to torment such a man to death."
"All the more reason for his falling in love with me, as I have fallen in love with his name, and if he doesn't I shall consider him a very uncivil engineer." Which was just her way of talking. This happened fully two months ago, but they have talked about it off and on ever since. And now he is coming to stay with Julius till the wedding, to cheer him up I suppose.
Sure enough he did come to-day, although lots of times I imagine that I never will get to see a person I have heard spoken of so often and in such high tones—and sometimes I wish I hadn't. But it wasn't that way with Mr. Macdonald. Nobody on earth could have been disappointed in him for he is one of the tallest gentlemen I ever saw with trousers so smoothly creased that they look like somebody had ironed them after he put them on. He takes his own time about saying things, being very careful about saying "of whom" and "by which" like the grammar tells you to.
Julius brought him over to Marcella's this afternoon so he could be making friends with her and the bridesmaids that were collected there. Remembering how they had been teasing Miss Cis about him I kept my eye on her from the minute he walked through the door. I was greatly disappointed though, for she never seemed to notice him. I guess she took a better look at him than I imagined though, for the minute they were gone she jumped clear across the room to where Marcella was standing and grabbed her and danced up and down.
"Isn't he beautiful!" she said all out of breath. "I'm just crazy about him! Did you ever see such Gibsony feet and legs in your life?" Which mortified her mother, it being impolite to mention feet and legs in her days.