“You be! Well, I’m glad on’t; but I do want to see Lucy Ann’s house, and I sha’n’t make an atom of trouble. She expects me,” Phineas said, and Rex replied, “I hardly think she does. Indeed, I know she doesn’t, and I wouldn’t go if I were you.”
Gradually the truth began to dawn upon Phineas, and there was a pathos in his voice and a moisture in his eyes as he said, “Is Lucy Ann ashamed of me? I wouldn’t have believed it, and she my only kin. I’d go through fire and water to serve her. Tell her so, and God bless her.”
Rex felt a great pity for the simple-hearted man to whom the glories of a dinner at the Waldorf did not quite atone for the loss of Lucy Ann, whom he spoke of again when after dinner Rex went with him to the hotel, where he was to spend the night.
“I’m an awkward critter, I know,” he said, “and not used to the ways of high society, but I’m respectable, and my heart is as big as an ox.”
Nothing, however, rested long on Phineas’s mind, and the next morning he was cheerful as ever when he met his friends at the station, and committed the unwonted extravagance of taking a chair with them in a parlor car, saying as he seated himself that he’d never been in one before, and that he found it tip-top.
CHAPTER XIX.
“I, REX, TAKE THEE, BERTHA.”
The words were said in the old Homestead about a year from the time when we first saw Bertha walking along the lane to meet her sister and holding in her hand the newspaper which had been the means of her meeting with Rex Hallam. The May day had been perfect then, and it was perfect now. The air was odorous with the perfume of the pines and the apple-blossoms, and the country seemed as fresh and fair as when it first came from the hands of its Creator. The bequest which Fred had made to Bertha, and which he wished he had doubled, had been quadrupled by Louie, who, when Bertha declined to take so much, had urged it upon her as a bridal present in advance. With that understanding Bertha had accepted it, and several changes had been made in the Homestead, both outside and in. Bertha’s room, however, where Rex had once slept, remained intact. This he insisted upon, and it was in this room that he received his bride from the hands of her bridesmaids. It was a very quiet affair, with only a few intimate friends from Worcester and Leicester, and Mrs. Hallam from New York. Bertha had suggested inviting Mrs. Haynes, but Rex vetoed that decidedly. She had been the direct cause of so much humiliation to Bertha that he did not care to keep her acquaintance, he said. But Mrs. Haynes had no intention to be ignored by the future Mrs. Rex Hallam, and one of the handsomest presents Bertha received came from her, with a note of congratulation. Louie and Phineas were master and mistress of ceremonies, Louie inside and Phineas outside, where he insisted upon caring for the horses of those who drove from Worcester and the village.
He’d “smile if he couldn’t do it up ship-shape,” he said, and he came at an early hour, gorgeous in swallowtail coat, white vest, stove-pipe hat, and an immense amount of shirt-front, ornamented with Rhine-stone studs. In his ignorance he did not know that a dress-coat was not just as suitable for morning as evening, and had bought one second-hand at a clothing-store in Boston. He wanted to make a good impression on Lucy Ann, he said to Grace, who had been at the Homestead two or three days, and who, declaring him a most delicious specimen, had hobnobbed with him quite familiarly. She told him she had no doubt he would impress Lucy Ann; and he did, for she came near fainting when he presented himself to her, asking what she thought of his outfit, and how it would “do for high.” She wanted to tell him that he would look far better in his every-day clothes than in that costume, but restrained herself and made some non-committal reply. Since meeting him on the ship she had had time to reflect that no one whose opinion was really worth caring for would think less of her because of her relatives, and she was a little ashamed of her treatment of him. Perhaps, too, she was softened by the sight of the old homestead, which had been her husband’s home, or Grace Travis’s avowal that she wished she had just such a dear codger of a cousin, might have had some effect in making her civil and even gracious to the man who, without the least resentment for her former slight of him, “Cousin Lucy Ann”-ed her continually and led her up to salute the bride after the ceremony was over.
There was a wedding breakfast, superintended by Louie, who, if she felt any regret for the might-have-been, did not show it, and was bright and merry as a bird, talking a little of Fred and a great deal of Charlie Sinclair, whom business kept from the wedding and whose lovely present she had helped select. The wedding trip was to extend beyond the Rockies as far as Tacoma, and to include the Fair in Chicago on the homeward journey. The remainder of the summer was to be spent at the Homestead, where Rex could hunt and fish and row to his heart’s content, if he could not have a fox-hunt. Both he and Bertha wished a home of their own in New York, but Mrs. Hallam begged so hard for them to stay with her for a year at least that they consented to do so.
“You may be the mistress, or the daughter of the house, as you please, only stay with me,” Mrs. Hallam said to Bertha, of whom she seemed very fond.