He was absent nearly two weeks,—and when he came back to us Alice was with him, and astonished us all with her wonderful outfit, her tall ruffs which reached to her ears, dresses which trailed a yard, sleeveless jackets of every device and color, and her hair, gotten up in a most remarkable manner. She said that she married Mr. Marks, and not his people, consequently nothing more must be expected of her as Mrs. Marks than she had been willing to render as Miss Creighton. But Alice was fond of “running things,” as Godfrey called it, and she had not been with us a month before she was head and front of the sewing-school for the poor children, and first manager of the Church Home, and secretary of the temperance club for the young men of the working class, and had established a reading room which she controlled entirely. Indeed she seemed in a fair way to revolutionize the town; and though she never approached to anything like familiarity with her husband’s parishioners, she was far more popular and better liked as Mrs. Marks than she had been as Alice Creighton, and when at the Easter festival several children were baptized three of them took her name, Alice Creighton Marks!
Some time in March there was another wedding at the Hill and Julia was the bride. She had accepted Major Camden, and started at once for his home among the pines of Carolina. All that spring and the ensuing summer Godfrey and Gertie stayed at Schuyler Hill, and when the autumn came they went down to New York and took possession of the handsome house which Miss Rossiter had bought and the colonel furnished for them.
It is very lonely and quiet now at Schuyler Hill, but Edith goes often to New York to visit Gertie in her beautiful home, where Miss Rossiter spends more than half her time, and where there is to be a family reunion when the Centennial guns are firing in honor of our nation’s hundredth birthday. Julia is coming from the south, and Robert and Emma from over the sea, and with them the little Highland lady they have named Edith Lyle, and so I finish the story commenced more than a year ago, when the October haze was on the hills and the music of marriage bells was sounding in my ears.
Esther Olivia Armstrong.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
- Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.