Rachael's delightful laugh rang out spontaneously from utter relief of heart.
"Oh, Greg, you're delicious! Tell me about old Lady Frothingham, is she difficult, too? And how's pretty Magsie Clay?"
"Now, if we're married to-morrow," the doctor Went on, too much absorbed in his topic to be lightly distracted. "But do you hear me, Ma'am? How does it sound?"
"It sounds delicious! Go on!"
"If we're married to-morrow, I say--it could be to-day just as well, but I suppose you girls have to buy clothes, and have your hands manicured, and so on--"
"You know we do, to say nothing of lying awake all night talking about our beaux!"
"Well"--he conceded it somewhat reluctantly--"then, to-morrow, some time before I go with Valentine to call for you, I'll go down to see my mother. She'll kiss me, and sigh, and feel martyred. In a month or two she'll call on me at the office. 'Why don't you and your wife come to see me, James?' 'Would you like us to, Mother? We fancied you were angry at us.' 'I am sorry, my son, of course, but I have never been angry. Will you come to-morrow night?' And when we go, my dear, you'd never dream that there was anything amiss, I assure you!"
"I'll make her love me!" said Rachael, smiling tenderly.
"Perhaps some day you'll have a very powerful argument," he said with a significant glance that brought the quick blood to her face. "Mother couldn't resist that!"
She did not answer. It was a part of this new freshness and purity of aspect that she could not answer.