“Where got he his wife?”
The old lady threw up her hands with quizzical scouting: “’Tis not set down in the books, but it would have been just like some soft-hearted creature to creep after him when he was exiled from heaven. And she is not the only woman who has followed a man to perdition, either,—more’s the pity!”
“You are seeing things awry to-day, Mistress Strudwick.”
“Mayhap, mayhap,” puffed the old lady. “I haven’t much of a prophet’s eye, but I see things of to-day plain enough, and I know that you are a pair of uncommon pretty girls, and are like to have many a beau on your string; but when marrying time comes, take an old woman’s advice and choose a man who is hale and hearty, for as sure as you are born, love flies out of the heart when indigestion enters the stomach.”
“Truly, Mistress Strudwick, you are better than ‘Poor Richard’s Almanac,’” laughed Joscelyn.
“Oh, my dear, I’ve seen it tried. Courtship is the finest thing in the world, but after the wedding love is largely a question of good cooking; and although you two are rank Tories, and so deserve any punishment the fates might send you, still I’d be glad, because of your comely looks, to see you escape your deserts. But here we are at my gate. I wonder what the town will say, Joscelyn, when they hear that you, Tory that you call yourself, brought a basket of wool for Continental socks from Amanda Bryce’s to my door.”
The girl’s face flamed with a sudden heat. Then she said with that beautiful courtesy that older folks found so charming:—
“It was not for the Continentals, but for my good neighbour that I brought the basket. I am not minded to see her kill herself in so bad a cause; rather do I want her to live and repent of her mistakes, that she herself may not be the first to solve that riddle of the devil’s wooing.” And kissing their hands jauntily to the old woman, the two girls rode away into the purple twilight.
“Bless her bonny face and quick tongue!” the old woman cried, waving her hand after them.
That night Mary cried herself to sleep over her shattered hopes, and in the privacy of a white-curtained room, Joscelyn read aloud the letter to her whom Eustace had in mind when he thought of the welcome of shy eyes and clinging white hands. And Betty fell asleep with the letter under her cheek, and all the soft June night was filled with flitting cadences and starry dreams.