“And now,” groaned Lady Garlingham, “he has to carry it through life!”
There was a gabbling on the upper landing. The bride was coming down in a white cut-cloth, tailor-made gown and a picture hat, Leila and Sheila and a bonneted maid following. The bridegroom, in immaculate tweeds, appeared at a lower door, the smug face of his valet behind him. There was a rush of women, an insane kissing and shaking of hands, a glare of red carpet, a flapping of striped awning. Rice and confetti impregnated the air, the doorsteps were swamped with smartly-dressed people. The chauffeur of Gar’s “Gohard” with a giant favor in the buttonhole of his livery coat grinned when Garlingham leaped tigerishly upon him and tore it from his chest. The automobile moved on, pursued by farewells. Some one had thoughtfully attached two slippers to its rearward steps, a stout, elderly, white satin slipper and a slim masculine, evening shoe of the pump kind, almost new.
“Say!” said the saw-edged American voice I had heard in the church—“say, won’t the car-conductor allow she’s traveling with her little boy? What will folks call him, anyhow?”
My mouth was on a level with the speaker’s back hair.
“The Widow’s Mite,” I said aloud—and fled.
SUSANNA AND HER ELDERS
I
The Earl of Beaumaris, a worthy and imposing personage, flushed from the nape of his neck to the high summit of his cranium—premature baldness figured amongst the family heredities—paced, in creaking patent-leather boots, up and down the castle library—a noble apartment of Tudor design, lined with rare and antique volumes into which none ever looked. There were other persons present beside the Dowager Countess, and, to judge by the strainedly polite expression of their faces, the squeaking leather must have been playing havoc with their nerves.
“Gustavus,” said the Dowager at length, “you’re an English Peer in your own castle, and not a pointsman on a Broadway block, unless I’m considerably mistaken. Sit down!”
“Mother, I will not be defied!” said Lord Beaumaris. “I will not be bearded by my own child—a mere chit of a girl! Had Susanna been a boy I should have known how to deal with this spirit of insubordination. Being a girl—and moreover, motherless—I abandon her to you. She has many things to learn, but let the first lesson you inculcate be this—that I positively refuse to be defied!”