“Yes, she has set her cap at you ever since mother died, and she came up to Hampstead with all her wraps and confounded drugs, and raised Cain generally,” Godfrey replied, and his father smiled a pleased kind of smile, and, man-like, was conscious of a new interest in the woman who had “set her cap for him,” while at the same time he felt intense satisfaction in thinking of Edith in all her youth and brilliant beauty, and comparing her with Aunt Christine, whose body was one great receptacle of drugs, and who, Godfrey said, wore two flannel wraps in the summer, and four in the winter, besides shawls and scarfs innumerable.
Godfrey’s preference was evidently for Edith, and so his father said to him: “You do not object. You like Miss Lyle, I believe.”
“Like her? Yes, I rather think I do, and if she’d been younger, or I older, I’d have gone for her myself. She’s the most splendid woman I ever saw, but, by Jove, I’m sorry for her, though, for what with Aunt Christine, and Alice, and Julia, and Tiffe and Em, she’ll have a sorry time.”
The colonel frowned darkly, and his eyebrows almost met together as he answered with great dignity:
“Everybody in my house must treat my wife with respect; but, Godfrey, perhaps it may be well in your letter home to speak a good word for Miss Lyle, prepare the way, you know. You have great influence over Julia, or at least over Miss Creighton, which amounts to the same thing. I have written, of course, but would like you to do so, too.”
“Certainly, with pleasure,” Godfrey said, and there was a merry twinkle in his saucy eyes as he thought of the “hornet’s nest” he would stir up at home.
The colonel had that day written to his eldest daughter, Julia, in his usual dignified manner, that he was about to marry Miss Edith Lyle, “a lady of good family, the daughter of a clergyman, the friend and companion of my deceased sister, your late Aunt Sinclair. She possesses many and varied accomplishments, and is, what I consider, a very remarkable person, and I shall expect a kind reception for her, and that all due deference will be paid to her by every member of my household. Break the news to your Aunt Christine, and tell Mrs. Tiffe to have the rooms in the south wing made ready for Mrs. Schuyler. I have written to Perry about repairing them, but she must superintend it.”
This was in part the colonel’s letter, while Godfrey’s was widely different.
“We are in for a step-mother, sure,” he wrote, “and may as well make the best of it. Try to imagine father in love, will you? and such a love! Truly she is ‘a very remarkable person,’ as you will say when you see her. Just think of father’s marrying a red-haired woman of forty, with a limp and glass eye, which looks at you with a squint, and a crack in her voice, which sounds like Ettie Armstrong’s old piano, and quite as many aches and pains as Aunt Christine herself! But then, she’s nice, and I like her ever so much, while the governor,—well, it is something wonderful to see how far gone he is; and I tell you, girls, one and all, that if you do not treat this beauty with proper attention there will be the old Nick to pay! She will take your breath away at first, for, after all I have said, you have no idea how she looks, and Alice must hold on to her little nose, and Aunt Christine may as well lay in a fresh supply of pills and Crown Bitters, and get her a new galvanic battery. She’ll need them all to steady her nerves after the shock the bride will give her. I shall be glad to be home once more, though I do not believe I am greatly improved with foreign travel. I still shake down my pants, and say ‘by Jove,’ and don’t believe I shall be ‘so disgusted with New York because it looks so new and backwoodsey,’ or that I shall constantly quote ‘dear, charming Par-ee.’ In short, I am just as much a ‘clown’ as ever, but by way of recompense I mean, if I can, to bring you the nicest kind of a travelled chap, Robert Macpherson, whom I met in Rome, and like so much, even if he does part his hair in the middle, and carry an eyeglass, and put perfumery into his bath, and wear ruffled night-shirts buttoned behind. He’s a good fellow, with money, and a profession, too. He is an artist, and his father was cousin to Lord Somebody or other, and I mean to persuade him to come to America with me for you girls to pull caps about. So you’ve something to live for besides the new mamma, to whom I must pay my respects as soon as I have finished this letter. So no more at present from your brother,
Godfrey.”