Briefly then Johnnie recapitulated, telling how he happened to find it out, and adding, “Such kissing I never heard! Fourteen smashers, for I counted; and don’t you know, father, how, if you even touched her hand or her hair, she would wiggle and squirm as if it hurt her? Well, I peeked through the crack of the door, and instead of wigglin’ she snugged up to him as if she liked it, and I know she did, for her eyes fairly shone, they were so bright, when she looked at him. But, father, she talked real good about you, and said that if you insisted she should marry you just the same; but you won’t father, will you?”
“No, my son, no. O Dora!”
The words were a groan, while the Squire laid his face upon the table. Instantly Johnnie was at his side comforting him as well as he was able, and trying manfully to keep down his own choking sorrow.
“Never mind, father, never mind; we will get along, you and I. And I’ll tell you now what folks say, and that is, that no chap has a right to marry his wife’s sister, which I guess is so. Don’t cry, father, don’t. Somebody will have you, if Aunt Dora won’t. There,—there,” and Johnnie tried in vain to hush the grief becoming rather demonstrative as the Squire began to realize what he had lost.
Noisy grief is never so deep as the calm, quiet sorrow which can find no outlet for its tears, and so Squire Russell was the more sure to outlive this bitter trial; but that did not help him now, or make the future seem one whit less desolate. It was an hour before Johnnie left him, and went into the hall, where he encountered Jessie, to whom he said, “I’ve told him and he’ll do the handsome thing, but it almost kills him. Maybe you, being a girl, can talk to him better than I,” and Johnnie went on up to Dora’s chamber, while Jessie, after hesitating a moment, glided quietly into the library, where Squire Russell still sat with his head upon the table.
Jessie was a nice little comforter, and so the Squire found her as she stood over him, just as she did when Margaret died, smoothing his hair, her favorite method of expressing sympathy, and saying to him so softly, “I pity you, and I think you so good to give her up.”
He could talk to Jessie; and bidding her to sit down, he asked what she knew of Dora’s love-affair with the doctor, thereby learning some things which Johnnie had not told him.
“It is well,” he said at last; “I see that Dora is not for me; I give her to Dr. West; and, Miss Verner,—Jessie,—I thank, you for your sympathy with both of us. I am glad you are here.”
Jessie was glad, too, for if there was anything she especially enjoyed, it was the whirl and the excitement going on around her. Bowing, she too quitted the library, and went up to corroborate what Johnnie had already told to Dora.
After that Squire Russell sat no more in the upper hall watching Dora’s door, but stayed downstairs with his little children, to whom he attached himself continually, as if he felt that he must be to them father and mother both. Now that the crisis was past, the doctor thought it advisable to go back to Mrs. Markham’s, his boarding-place, but he met Squire Russell first, and heard from his own lips a confirmation of what Johnnie had said. There was no malice in John Russell’s nature, and he treated the doctor as cordially and kindly as if he had not been his rival.