The house is no house at all yet, of course. Caro calls it the Perchery at present, and says she will give it a name when we can all sit in it, instead of roosting on stones outside and staring at the place where it is going to be. But the cellar is finished, anyway, and is of ample proportions, as a country cellar should be; and until we get something else to admire, we find it an absorbing subject of contemplation. Even Cousin Jane was delighted with it, and still more with Caro’s promise to go home with her and stay until after the wedding.
Caro went over there as soon as I was settled in bed for a rest, and came back glowing with triumph. Cousin Jane was coming in the morning to spend the day, and to take the child back home with her in the evening.
“And oh, Mammy Lil, she’s perfectly charmed with David, and quite certain she picked him out for me! The shock of it nearly bowled me over for a minute. You know that big New York bank that failed a week or two ago? Everybody thought Bob’s father’s bank was mixed up in it, and there was a regular run on it. David and Daddy Jack were too full of the Perchery to mention it; but it converted Cousin Jane straight through. The bank’s all right—I asked David about it, driving home—but you can’t make Cousin Jane believe it. She thinks a bank should be above suspicion by anybody, and if it isn’t, it’s a whited sepulchre forevermore. So she’s delighted that she had the good sense to pass over a fellow like Bob, who comes from a family of speculators, and choose for me a good, steady, kind, reliable business man like David Bird, instead. I wish you could hear her, Mammy Lil; she’s downright edifying. And she fairly beamed on David, though he hadn’t been near her for weeks. Everything’s all right, if only the hot weather doesn’t make you sick. If they’d told us how hot it was, I wouldn’t have brought you home.”
The heat was extraordinary for the time of the year, and still continues so; but it didn’t keep Cousin Jane at home, though usually she won’t budge unless it’s cool.
She was in high good humor, and evidenced it by a peck on my cheek and the remark that I must be getting better, for I really didn’t look so very many years older than I was. She approved of the plans for the house, especially when she found it was to be our wedding gift to Caro; and she went out “to perch,” at Caro’s invitation, and admired every stone in the foundations. Then she came in and settled seriously down to the subject of clothes.
It seems that Grace is lavishing on Milly’s outfit all the pretty things Cousin Jason prevented her from giving the child in her girlhood; and Cousin Jane’s family pride has risen in a most desirable and unexpected manner to demand that Caro shall be as well provided for as her cousin; so Caro can prepare in peace. Cousin Jane even proposes to help her, tooth and nail. Caro and I are a little daunted by this excess of zeal, Cousin Jane’s taste—or lack of it—being a byword in the family. But Caro will find a way to manage her; and we have already settled the question of the dress she is to wear at the wedding. I had Caro buy it for me in New York—a soft, rich, silken fabric—and it is to be made by the best dressmaker in the city. If we left it to Cousin Jane, she would get old black Sally to make it, at seventy-five cents a day; she says it’s sinful to waste money on town dress-makers.
But she doesn’t mind my wasting it for her. If there was a corner of her heart still congealed it melted when she took the silk between her finger and thumb, and fully tested its quality.
“It’s an elegant present, Lyddy,” she declared graciously, “an’ I don’t mind taking it from you one mite. I’ve always said you meant well; an’ it ain’t your fault if you’re foolish.”
Could I ask for a handsomer coat of white-wash than that?