She stuttered to a full stop, blushing. “Out with it, my dear,” said I.
“Marry folk?” she asked.
“They may,” said the doctor.
“Oh, Davy!”
“Whoop!” screamed I, leaping up. “You’re never tellin’ me that! Quick, Bessie! Come, doctor! They been waitin’ this twenty year.”
I caught his right hand, Bessie his left; and out we dragged him, paying no heed to his questions, which, by and by, he abandoned, because he laughed so hard. And down the path we sped—along the road—by the turn to Cut-Throat Cove—until, at last, we came to the cottage of Aunt Amanda and Uncle Joe Bow, whom we threw into a fluster with our news. When the doctor was informed of the exigency of the situation, he married them on the spot, improvising a ceremony, without a moment’s hesitation, as though he had been used to it all his life: a family of six meanwhile grinning with delight and embarrassment.
“You sees, zur,” Uncle Joe explained, when ’twas over, “we never had no chance afore. ‘Manda an’ me was down narth when the last parson come this way. An’ ’Manda she’ve been wantin’——”
“T’ have it done,” Aunt Amanda put in, patting the curly head of the smallest Bow, “afore——”
“Ay,” said Uncle Joe, “wantin’ t’ have it done, shipshape, afore she——”
“Died,” Aunt Amanda concluded.