Family Pride; Or, Purified by Suffering

by Mary Jane Holmes

Wilford was very fond of his girlish wife and very proud of her, too, when strangers paused, as they often did, to look back after her. Thus far nothing had arisen to mar the happiness of his first weeks of married life; nothing except the letters from Silverton, over which Katy always cried, until he sometimes wished that the family could not write. But they could and they did; even Aunt Betsy inclosed in Helen's letter a note, wonderful both in orthography and composition, and concluding with the remark that she would be glad when Catherine returned and was settled in a home of her own, as she would then have a new place to visit.

There was a dark frown on Wilford's face, and for a moment he felt tempted to withhold the note from Katy, but this he could not do then, so he gave it into her hands, watching her as with burning cheeks, she read it through, and asking her at its close why she looked so red.

"Oh, Wilford," and she crept closely to him, "Aunt Betsy spells so queerly, that I was wishing you would not always open my letters first. Do all husbands do so?"

It was the only time Katy had ventured to question a single act of his, submitting without a word to whatever was his will. Wilford knew that his father would never have presumed to break a seal belonging to his mother, but he had broken Katy's and he should continue breaking them, so he answered, laughingly;

"Why, yes, I guess they do. My little wife has surely no secrets to hide from me?"

"No secrets," Katy answered, "only I did not want you to see Aunt Betsy's letter, that's all."

"I did not marry Aunt Betsy—I married you," was Wilford's reply; which meant far more than Katy guessed.

With three thousand miles between him and his wife's relatives, Wilford could endure to think of them; but whenever letters came to Katy bearing the Silverton postmark, he was conscious of a far different sensation from what he experienced when the postmark was New York and the handwriting that of his own family. But not in any way did this feeling manifest itself to Katy, who, as she always wrote to Helen, was very, very happy, and never more so, perhaps, than while they were at Alnwick, where, as if he had something for which to atone, he was unusually kind and indulgent, caressing her with unwonted tenderness, and making her ask him once if he loved her a great deal more now than when they were first married.

"Yes, darling, a great deal more," was Wilford's answer, as he kissed her upturned face, and then went for the last time to Genevra's grave; for on the morrow they were to leave the neighborhood of Alnwick for the heather blooms of Scotland.

There was a trip to Edinburgh, a stormy passage across the Straits of Dover, a two months' sojourn in Paris, and then they went to Rome, where Wilford intended to pass the winter, journeying in the spring through different parts of Europe. He was in no haste to return to America; he would rather stay where he could have Katy all to himself, away from her family and his own. But it was not so to be, and not very long after his arrival at Rome there came a letter from his mother apprising him of his father's dangerous illness, and asking him to come home at once. The elder Cameron had not been well since Wilford left the country, and the physician was fearful that the disease had assumed a consumptive form, Mrs. Cameron wrote, adding that her husband's only anxiety was to see his son again. To this there was no demur, and about the first of December, six months from the time he had sailed, Wilford arrived in Boston, having taken a steamer for that city. His first act was to telegraph for news of his father, receiving a reply that he was better; the alarming symptoms had disappeared, and there was now great hope of his recovery.