"I believe she's thinking about that scoundrel yet," said Alex. "But she has just got to understand that we'll never allow it, Willy. You may as well make that clear to her, and let her get over her moping."
William King looked thoughtful and said he would call again.
However, any of us Old Chester girls could have enlightened the doctor. "Mary was pining away for her lover;" that was all there was to it. But the lover never appeared, being engaged in offering samples of pomade and perfumery to apothecary stores in other regions. And then, suddenly, the queer thing happened....
The Globe announced: "Married—by Dr. Lavendar, Mary Gordon to Algernon Keen"—and the date, which was the night before.
"What!" said Old Chester at the breakfast-table, and gaped out of its windows to see Mary, crying very much, get into the stage, not at her father's house, but at the Tavern door, if you please, and drive away with the Person. What did it mean? "Was Alex at home? Did he consent?" demanded Old Chester; for Alex had been away from home for a week. By noon it was decided that Alex had consented; for it came out that he had returned to Old Chester the previous afternoon, and with him, shrinking into the corner of the stage, was Mr. Algy Keen.
"Get out," Alex said to him when the stage drew up at the Gordon house. The man got out, shambling and stumbling, with a furtive look over his shoulder, for Alex Gordon walked behind him to the front door, his right hand gripped upon his walking-stick, his left clinched at his side.
"He kep' just behind the feller," the stage-driver told Van Horn at the Tavern afterwards—"just behind him, like as if he was afraid the feller'd run away from him. But the feller, he stopped right at the steps, and he turned around, and he says, 'Mind you,' he says (mad as a hatter)—'mind you,' he says, 'I'm not brought, I've come';—whatever that means," the stage-driver ruminated.
So much Old Chester knew the day after Mary Gordon's wedding. And it naturally sought to know a little more.
"I suppose her father feels it very much?" ventured Mrs. Barkley to Dr. Lavendar.
"Any man feels the marriage of his only girl," said Dr. Lavendar, briefly. And Mrs. Barkley held her tongue. But Mrs. Drayton, who was just then anxious about her soul and found it necessary to consult Dr. Lavendar as to the unpardonable sin—Mrs. Drayton was not so easily squelched. "My Jean says that the Gordon's Rachel told her that Alex brought the man into the house by the ear, and then sent her for you, running, and—"