The company laughed at such a prophecy for one so antiquated, and the doctor's absurdity put an end to the spaeing of fortunes, but he had effected his purpose. He had found the words that expressed the hope, half entertained so far, of Ailie and the fear of her brother Dan. They learned before they left that he had not spoken without his cue, yet it was a little saddened they went home at midnight with their ward in masquerade.
CHAPTER XXXI
FORTUNATELY Kate's marriage came to distract them for a while from the thought of Bud's future. The essential house had been found that was suitable for a captain, yet not too dearly rented—a piece of luck in a community where dwellings are rarely vacant, and every tenant over eighty years of age has the uneasy consciousness that half a dozen pairs betrothed have already decided upon a different color of paint for his windows, and have become resigned, with a not unpleasing melancholy, to the thought that in the course of nature his time cannot be long.
The Captain—that once roving eagle-heart subdued by love for the maid of Colonsay—so persistently discouraged any yachting trips which took the Wave for more than a night or two from her moorings that Lady Anne and her husband, knowing the heart themselves, recommended immediate marriage; and Miss Bell, in consequence, was scouring the country-side for Kate's successor in the kitchen, but hopeless of coming on one who could cook good kale, have a cheery face, and be a strict communicant. “I can get fine cooks that are wanting in the grace of God, and pious girls who couldn't be trusted to bake a Christian scone,” she said; “it's a choice between two evils.”
“Of two evils choose the third, then,” said Dan to his sister, flushed and exhilarated by a search that, for elderly maiden ladies, makes up for an older hunt. “The sport's agreeing with you.”
It was a great distress to Bud that the wedding should take place in the house and not in church, as seemed most fitting. She felt a private ceremony deprived her of a spectacle, with Miss Amelia Duff playing the wedding march on the harmonium, and the audience filing up the aisle in their Sunday clothes, the carriage of their hats revealing character.
“Why, you're simply going to make it look like a plain tea!” she protested. “If it was my marriage, Kate, I'd have it as solemn and grand as Harvest Sunday. A body doesn't get married to a man in brass buttons every other day, and it's a chance for style.”
“We never have our weddings in the church,” said Kate. “Sometimes the gentry do, but it's not considered nice; it's kind of Roman Catholic. Forbye, in a church, where would you get the fun?”