“And does he seem perfectly splendid to you, dear?”
“I guess so,” said Sarah.
“And you are to be married—when? A week from to-day? Oh, what a time you will have getting your clothes! And to think I’ll not be here at the wedding—it’s too, too bad. Sarah, I’m just delighted with you. I always knew you weren’t like other people; most girls wouldn’t have dared.”
“Maybe I’ll wish that I hadn’t,” said Sarah, and the dazed, vacant expression came back with the words.
Richard and his friends were at first incredulous when Bertha narrated the news to them; then, to quote Dick’s expression, Sarah’s stock, in the general estimation, went up fifty per cent.
“The old girl must have had something jolly about her, after all,” he said. “You were right this time, Bertha. I met this Bronson once, and he’s a good fellow. What a lot of courage he must have!”
Bertha only met Sarah once after this before she left for the Lakes. She saw the bridegroom’s picture, which represented him as a tall, stalwart fellow, with a big beard and merry, honest eyes. Bertha liked the face, and felt that it was one that inspired confidence.
“To think that after all my planning she should have done it just by herself,” said Bertha to her husband, “and it was such an unlikely thing.”
“It is singular that the world can move without your pushing it,” replied her husband with a quizzical smile.
Within a few months the Martindales’ plans were broken up; their stay West was no longer necessary, and they went back home again. Bertha received one letter from Sarah after her marriage, a singularly flat and colorless epistle, which told nothing. Bertha had periodical times of wonderment as to Sarah’s present life and chances of happiness. Her own short experience of Western life resolved itself mainly into a recollection of the girl with whom, after all, she had been most intimately associated, and who had disappeared from her horizon so suddenly and romantically.