THE PHOTOGRAPH AND THE ORIGINAL.
Families in which the daughters marry early and in due succession, can have but little idea of the huge, volcanic shock an engagement means in a house like Boldero Abbey.
True, it had once before gone through a like experience, but the present happy occasion was intensified by a variety of causes.
It was satisfactory, altogether satisfactory. Like good wine it needed not the bush which General Boldero had strewed so plentifully over Godfrey Stubbs's antecedents and surroundings. His future son-in-law was well-born and well-bred, and his having lately succeeded to a considerable fortune was also well known. Accordingly—we are obliged to add "accordingly"—it was in good taste to say nothing about it.
But he could show, and he did show, enough to raise a smile wherever he went. However demure his air when receiving congratulations, he could insert here and there a phrase, adroitly conceived beforehand, the point of which could not be missed—and he was rampant at home.
There he might freely puff and blow, and turn his little world upside down. Nothing, not the veriest trifles of every-day life escaped his touch; and had it not been that the sympathies of all were with him, that there was not an antagonistic member of the family or household, he would have been found unbearable.
But the change, the stir, the commotion, the heavy posts, and constant ringing of the door-bell were delightful to everybody. There was occupation for everybody. They ran against each other with busy, pre-occupied faces. They hurried, when formerly time was of no account. The writing-tables were bargained for, and Maud, all-important, retained one solely for her own use,—while the two who had fancied they would have so much to tell of their London escapade, found it so completely superseded by the new excitement, that they dismissed it from their own minds.
In short the whole atmosphere quivered with the sensation: "Who would have thought it?—who would have believed it?—" to which there was but one response: "We cannot make enough of it".
The man himself, however, had yet to be seen.
"Yes, it is very unfortunate," observed Miss Boldero, in answer to neighbourly inquiries; "Major Foster has been obliged to put off coming again. He has had another touch of fever—his long residence in hot climates has left him subject to these, and though it is nothing to be anxious about, he has to be careful. We expect him next week."