"No danger but what she will, and yours too," was Rondeau's consoling reply.
"Lord knows," said Aunt Dilsey, "fust time she sasses me, I'll run away long of Jack and the baby. I'll tie up my new gown and cap in a handkerchief this night."
[pg 205]Leffie now proposed that her mother should defer her intended flight until the arrival of the dreaded Julia, while Rondeau added, "Besides, Dilsey, if you should run away your delicate body couldn't get further than the swamp, where you'd go in up to your neck first lunge, and all marster's horses couldn't draw you out."
This allusion to her size changed the current of Aunt Dilsey's wrath, which now turned and spent itself on Rondeau. Her impression of Julia, however, never changed, although she was not called upon to run away.
Mrs. Lacey, too, received the news of her son's engagement with evident dissatisfaction; but she thought remonstrance would be useless, and she kept silent, secretly praying that Julia might prove better than her fears. In due course of time there came from Kentucky a letter of congratulation from Fanny; but she was so unaccustomed to say or write what she did not feel that the letter, so far as congratulations were concerned, was a total failure. She, however, denied her engagement with Frank, and this, if nothing else, was sufficient reason why Julia refused to show it to Dr. Lacey. Julia knew the chain by which she held him was brittle and might at any time be broken, and it was not strange that she longed for the last days of October, when with Dr. Lacey she would return to Kentucky.
They came at last, and one bright, cloudless morning Uncle Joshua got out his carriage and proceeded to Frankfort, where, as he had expected, he met Julia and his expected son-in-law. His greeting of the former was kind and fatherly enough, but the moment he saw the latter, he felt, as he afterward said, an almost unconquerable desire to flatten his nose, gouge his eyes, knock out his teeth and so forth, which operations would doubtless have greatly astonished Dr. Lacey and given him what almost every man has, viz., a most formidable idea of his wife's relations.
He, however, restrained his wrath, and when, at a convenient time, Dr. Lacey, with a few ominous "ahems" and made-up coughs, indicated his intention of asking for Julia, Uncle Joshua cut him short by saying, "Never mind, I know what you want. You may have her and welcome. I only wish she would make as good a wife as you will husband. But mind now, when you find out what for a fury you've got, don't come whinin' round me, for I give you fa'r warnin'."
Here Dr. Lacey thought proper to say that possibly Mr. Middleton did not understand his daughter.
"Not understand her?" repeated Mr. Middleton. "What's to [pg 206] hinder? She's my own gal, and I like her well enough; but don't I know she's as fiery as a baker's oven?"
"She is greatly changed," continued Dr. Lacey. "Don't you give her credit for that?"