The letter is then read aloud, and it is so long that one is glad to think that the absent Kate did not attempt to duplicate it, but contented herself with the Pauline method of one general epistle. With the Jamieson characteristic of telling everything exhaustively, Kate writes:—
"Mr. Ward is not at all bad-looking; a little hesitating in his manner, and inclined to be untidy—you see, I am telling you everything quite candidly—but of course I can remedy all these defects when we are married. He has a short brown moustache, and rather a conical-shaped head." (This is a fault that one feels Kate will not be able to remedy, even when she has married him.) "He looks clever, though I do not think he is, very; he is well-connected, but does not know all his best relations. Poor, but with generous instincts"—one feels as though a chiromancist were reading a client's palm—"well-read, but without power of conveying intelligence to others; hair rather thin, and (I am afraid) false teeth; very religious, but I consider this in him more temperament than anything else. He has had a hard life, and not always enough to eat, until his uncle died; but now he could be quite independent if he liked, but he prefers the position which a Government appointment gives him.
"I hope to bring him down to stay when I return; please let him have the south bedroom, as that is the warmest, and I do not think James is very strong. I should like him to have a fire at night—I can arrange that with mother, as I feel quite well off now. We are to be married in July, and I am giving up my post here at once, so as to see something of you all before I go away."
At this point the letter referred once more to Mr. Ward's personal appearance, and the description was of so great length that when Margaret Jamieson, who had run all the way from her home to ours to give it to us to read, asked me breathlessly what I thought about it, I determined to leave unread the remaining paragraphs, and to judge for myself of the bridegroom when he should come to Belmont and we should be invited to meet him.
"There is one thing," said Mrs. Jamieson when, at the request of The Family, Palestrina went to sit with her one afternoon a few weeks later, to support her through the trying ordeal of waiting for Kate and "James," as he is now familiarly called, to arrive; "the girls have nothing to be ashamed of in their home." She looked with a certain amount of pardonable pride at the clean white curtains, and we gathered that we were meant to comment upon their early appearance. The white curtains, Palestrina says, are not usually put up at Belmont until the first week in May.
"They look very handsome," I said. It was a Jamieson afternoon—very wet, but clearing up about sundown, and Palestrina had suggested my escorting her as far as Belmont. But the rain came down in torrents again when I would have started to return home, and the good Jamiesons begged me to stay, to avoid the chance of a chill, and to meet James.
"It is the first break in the family," said Mrs. Jamieson tearfully, "since poor Robert died. But, as James says, he hopes I am gaining a son and not losing a daughter." From which I gathered that James was a gentleman given to uttering rather a stale form of platitude.
All were waiting in a state of great trepidation the arrival of the engaged couple, and it was quite hopeless to avoid the encounter, for the rain descended in sheets outside, and preparations for supper seemed to be going on in the dining-room at Belmont. It was decided, by universal consent, that only Mrs. Jamieson and Palestrina and I should be in the drawing-room at the moment when they should enter. The presence of strangers, it was thought, would make it easier for James at the meeting where all were kinsfolk except himself. With their usual consideration The Family decided that the rest of their large number should afterwards drop in casually, two by two, and be introduced to the new brother-in-law without ceremony. Mrs. Jamieson, who had not left the house that day, nor for many days previously, having been absorbed in preparations for the expected guest, was dressed in a bonnet and her favourite jacket with the storm-collar, which, as she explained to my sister, took away from the roundness of her face and gave her confidence.
Her habitual shyness, added to her fears of the unknown in the shape of the future son-in-law, had wrought her into a sort of rigid state in which conversation seemed impossible, and although we did our best to divert her attention I am doubtful if she heard a word we said.
"They should be here soon," I remarked presently.