By this time Jake and his party were again beside us. "I hope no one is hurt," said the minister, as he took Jean's free arm to help her out of a drift. It seems that in some way I had become entangled in the other. "A rather rough start on the sea of matrimony, Mrs. Lane, I am afraid," he added to Marjorie, who was shaking the snow out of her hair.
No one was hurt, as snow is very useful for falling into, but Jake had to give up his cutter. We piled into it, taking Mrs. Jake along, with me driving and Spoof and Jake and Reddy and the minister following on foot as a sort of bodyguard, albeit a most undisciplined one if we could judge by the recriminations that were hurled about the unfortunate Englishman's head. On various occasions, looking back, I could see a flourish of arms and blows exchanged and someone down in the snow, and roars of laughter rolled up after us through the wintry night.
At last the shack on Fourteen came into view, and, to our great surprise, a light shone from the window. When we came up close we saw a number of jumpers and bob-sleighs about, and the tracks of many feet in the snow.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The scene inside was an animated and amazing one. In the principal room a table had been built and now groaned beneath a load such as I had not thought the country-side could supply. It was covered with snowy linen, and an assortment of chinaware of several varieties of pattern threw back the yellow glint of two great oil lamps, one of which I recognized as having recently decorated a shelf in a corner of Spoof's shack on section Two. I had just time to catch a glimpse of a frosted wedding-cake in the centre of the table and a steaming turkey at one end when Jean brought me out of my trance.
"Isn't it wonderful, Frank—wonderful!—to think of it, and all of them so poor! Why, even, there's Mr. Sneezit!"
It was true. The whole community was present. They had swarmed to our premises in our absence, bringing the necessaries of the wedding dinner with them, and now they were lined up around the walls, guilty-faced but delighted. There was Brown, whom we had first found wrestling with the architecture of a sod stable; there was Mrs. Brown, dimpled and smiling, dreaming of far-off English Yule-log and mistletoe, and making her dreams come true on the wind-swept plains of Canada; there were the three little Browns, washed and on their good behavior. There was Andy Smith, the ship builder from Glasgow, now learning the drift of stone-boats and prairie schooners, and puffing on his short clay pipe the while. There was Ole Hansen and Olga, his wife, and tucked into the recesses of my room I discerned the outlines of fair-haired, tow-headed children—doubtless six in all. And there, sure enough, was our good friend Sneezit, and beside him Sneezit's wife, both trying to look very proper and at ease, and failing rather sadly, except when a broad Russian grin sent their more forbidding aspects scampering for cover.
Mrs. Sneezit's bright yellow shawl lent a dash of color to the company. The Sneezit juniors had been left at home, where, snuggled in their warm dug-out, they doubtless speculated proudly and somewhat wonderingly upon their parents' debut into English-speaking society. And there, too, across the table was the American, Burke, tall, lean and lantern-jawed, his weather-beaten cheeks still revealing a suggestion of the olive hues of a more southern latitude, his thin lips parted over well-set teeth in a smile of friendly amusement. Nearby was his busy wife, Lucy, short and active and with possibilities of plumpness to compensate her for the ravages of time. They were a wonderful company, typical foundation stones of a nation; foundation work the quality of which shall be tested through all the years to come.
I said the whole community was present, but I was wrong. Mrs. Alton and the little boy, Jerry, were not there. I mentioned their absence to Spoof when I had an opportunity.
"They must not have known about it," was his explanation. But Spoof had evidently been at pains to make sure that all the others in the district should know. Why had he omitted Mrs. Alton? It was one more tangle in the puzzle of Spoof's peculiar attitude toward the widow on Eighteen.