Poor woman, she prided herself on her clumsy diplomacy.
“Let him get ready for his party,” she reflected. “It will keep him busy—meanwhile.”
In the face of Mynheer Mopius’s blindly staring selfishness, the stratagem was completely successful. Plunged up to the eyebrows in preparations for a gorgeous entertainment, which was, of course, to excel all similar ones, that gentleman forgot to notice his wife’s condition. He would run up to her with long descriptions of his arrangements, to which she listened reposefully for hours. When he went down-stairs again she smiled. He was happy, and he was letting her die in peace.
Soon Mynheer Mopius was obliged to slip over to Horstwyk to consult with the relations who had so suddenly increased in importance. He found the trio gathered in the Parsonage drawing-room to receive him, and he patted their heads all round. He even condescended to chaff Josine about “one wedding begetting another,” as they say in Dutch, and proposed that she should be bridesmaid and make up to the best man.
“I should never marry my junior. I disapprove of such matches,” replied Josine, hitting out, however unreasonably, at both Ursula and Mopius.
“Well, we can’t all marry our twin-sisters, like Abraham,” said Mopius, reddening. “Can we, Roderick?”
“Sarah was Abraham’s half-sister,” answered the Dominé, wistfully gazing out at the placid sky.
“Well, at any rate, my Sarah’s only six years my senior, and I made it two the day we married. I’ve done my duty to the old girl. Ursula, I hope that thirty years hence you’ll be able to say as much.”
“You married for money,” retorted Josine. As her niece’s wedding-day approached, Miss Mopius’s growing disagreeableness became a source of great agitation to herself. She smelled at her vinaigrette.
“Pooh!” replied Mopius. “If so, I quadrupled the sum. Don’t be more of a nuisance than you can help, Josine, or I sha’n’t invite you to my party.”