“Yours to command,
“Jerusha Amanda Pepper.”
It was Roy’s duty to feel indignant toward one who called his wife elect, “that thing with a boy’s name,” and he made himself believe he was, and styled her a very rude, impertinent woman, and then he thought of what she had said about Edna’s disapproval of the match, and of Georgie’s treatment of her in Iona, and that hurt him far worse than Miss Pepper’s calling his betrothed “that thing with the boy’s name.”
What could Georgie have said or done to Edna? She had always seemed so kindly disposed toward the girl, and since their engagement had warmly seconded his plan of finding her, and bringing her home. Once he thought to speak to Georgie herself on the subject, but generously refrained from doing so, lest she should be pained by knowing there was any one who was not pleased with the prospect of her being his wife. But Georgie, who was not overscrupulous with regard to other people’s property, found the letter on the library table, where he left it, and unhesitatingly read it through, and then that same afternoon took occasion, in Edna’s presence, to ask Roy if he had heard from his sister yet, and to express herself as so sorry that they could not find where she was.
“Poor little creature, so young and so childlike as she seemed when I saw her at Iona,” she said, flashing her great eyes first upon Roy and then upon Miss Overton. “And so shy too of strangers. Why, I almost fancied that she was afraid of me, she was so timid and reserved, and possibly she was, for in my excitement I might have been a little brusque in my manner.”
“I do not remember asking if you urged her to come here at that time,” Roy said, thinking of Miss Pepper’s letter, while Georgie, thinking of it too, replied without the least hesitation:
“Certainly, I did. I said all I could consistently say; but she was too sick to undertake the journey, and then she had a nervous dread of meeting Charlie’s friends. I’ve since thought it possible that she was too much stunned and bewildered to know exactly what was said to her, or what we meant by saying it.”
Georgie had made her explanation, and effectually removed from Roy’s mind any unpleasant impression which Aunt Jerry’s letter might have left upon it. And she was satisfied; for it did not matter what Edna thought of her; and still Georgie could not then meet the wondering gaze of the brown eyes fixed so curiously upon her; and she affected to be very much interested and occupied with a cap she was finishing for Mrs. Churchill, and did not look at Edna, who managed to escape from the room as soon as possible, and who, out in the yard, had recourse to her old trick of digging her heels into the gravel by way of relieving her feelings.
Roy made one effort more to win over Miss Pepper, but with so poor success that he gave the matter up for a time, and devoted himself to trying to get up a passion for his betrothed equal to that she felt for him, and to studying and enjoying Miss Overton, who became each day more bewildering and enjoyable for him, while to Mrs. Churchill she became more and more necessary, until both wondered how they had ever existed without her.