At Helen’s instigation Katy had deferred Wilford’s visit four weeks instead of three, but in that time there had come two letters from him, so full of anxiety and sympathy for “his poor little Katy who had been so sick,” that even Helen began to think that he was not as proud and heartless as she supposed, and that he did love her sister after all.
“If I supposed he meant to deceive her I should wish I was a man to cowhide him,” she said to herself, with flashing eye, as she heard Katy exulting that he was coming “to-morrow.”
This time he would stop at Linwood, for Katy had asked Morris if he might, while Morris had told her yes, feeling his heart-wound throb afresh, as he thought how hard it would be to entertain his rival. Of himself Morris could do nothing, but with the help he never sought in vain he could do all things, and so he gave orders that the best chamber should be prepared for his guest, bidding Mrs. Hull see that no pains were spared for his entertainment, and then with Katy he waited for the day, the last one in April, which would bring Wilford Cameron a second time to Silverton.
CHAPTER VII.
WILFORD’S SECOND VISIT.
Wilford Cameron had tried to forget Katy Lennox, both for his sake and her own, for he foresaw that she could not be happy with his family, and he came to think it might be a wrong to her to transplant her into a soil so wholly unlike that in which her habits and affections had taken root.
His father once had abruptly asked him if there was any truth in the report that he was about to marry and make a fool of himself, and when Wilford had answered “No,” he had replied with a significant
“Umph! Old enough, I should think, if you ever intend to marry. Wilford,” and the old man faced square about, “I know nothing of the girl, except what I gathered from your mother and sisters. You have not asked my advice. I don’t suppose you want it, but if you do, here it is. If you love the girl and she is respectable, marry her if she is poor as poverty and the daughter of a tinker; but if you don’t love her, and she’s as rich as a nabob, for thunder’s sake keep away from her.”
This was the elder Cameron’s counsel, and Katy’s cause rose fifty per cent. in consequence. Still Wilford was sadly disquieted, so much so that his partner, Mark Ray, could not fail to observe that something was troubling him, and at last frankly asked what it was. Wilford knew he could trust Mark, and he confessed the whole, telling him far more of Silverton than he had told his mother, and then asking what his friend would do were the case his own.
Fond of fun and frolic, Mark laughed immoderately at Wilford’s description of Aunt Betsy bringing her “herrin’ bone” patch-work into the parlor, and telling him it was a part of Katy’s “settin’ out,” but when it came to her hint for an invitation to visit New York, the amused young man roared with laughter, wishing so much that he might live to see the day when poor Aunt Betsy Barlow stood ringing for admittance at No.—— Fifth Avenue.
“Wouldn’t it be rich, though, the meeting between your Aunt Betsy and Juno?” and the tears fairly poured down the young man’s face.