And thereupon she clasped both her little wrinkled hands round his arm and gave it a tender squeeze, and he stooped down and kissed her round, wholesome, pink old cheek.
Well, after John had ordered the dinner, and after old ’Neas Bright had come limping down from the almshouse and had related divers anecdotes, and drunk the couple’s health, and gone away rejoicing with a half-crown piece in his pocket, John and Susan sat down behind the screen which cut off one corner of the room from the rest, and gave themselves up to repose and reminiscence.
Perhaps it was because they were so happy and so much absorbed in each other, and also perhaps because they had both of them grown a trifle hard of hearing of late years, that they did not notice a sudden bustle and excitement in the street below.
Had they looked out they would have seen a string of vehicles of different kinds drawn up just outside—spring-carts, gigs, a waggonette, and last but not least, a waggon drawn by a team of splendid farm-horses and filled to overflowing with country people. All the occupants of these conveyances were dressed in holiday attire, all wore enormous white nosegays, while the horses’ blinkers and the drivers’ whips were alike decorated with snowy streamers. The door opened suddenly, and some one ran round the screen.
“Why, there they are!” cried a child’s jubilant voice. “There’s grandpa and grandma a-sittin’ hand-in-hand.”
And then from the staircase, and from the hall, and from the street arose a sudden deafening cheer.
“I d’ ’low they’ve caught us!” cried John, with a whimsical glance at his spouse; but she was already engaged in fondling the child and scarcely heard him.
A moment afterwards the room was crowded with the descendants of the old folks—three generations of them: middle-aged prosperous-looking sons and daughters; rosy grandchildren and even one great-grandchild, for young John’s Annie had brought her baby, which proved to be the finest child of its age that had ever been seen, and to have “come on wonderful” since Mrs. Bussell last beheld it. And there was such a kissing and hugging and scolding and laughing as had surely never before been heard in that staid, respectable old room, and grandma was very arch and coy on being reproached for her unkind notion, and grandpa chuckled boisterously, and rubbed his hands, and Mary, the only unmarried daughter, related how her suspicions had at first been aroused on discovering that the chickens had been fed so early—all the family knowing the history of that bygone ruse by heart; and how, though she did at first fancy they might have gone to Weymouth, she had made inquiries in the neighbourhood, and had ascertained that a chaise with three people wearing white nosegays had been seen driving Branston-way very soon after daylight. And then John, the eldest son, took up the tale, and related how they had settled to wait till all the family had arrived, and how he had declared that the labourers and their wives should not be baulked of their share of merry-making, and how the whole party was come to keep the golden wedding at Branston.
“The folks are waiting for you outside now,” he concluded; “you’d best show yourselves to them, else they’ll never forgive you.”
So over to the window marched the bridal couple, and there they stood arm-in-arm, the illusion being a little damaged by the presence of the baby which grandma would not relinquish, and by the background of laughing folk, all of whom bore so strong a family likeness to their progenitors that their relationship could not be doubted.