Jack had time to purchase the wine, which ought to have been good, judging from the price. Unfortunately, Mr. Simpson was too late to join them. The train went off without him, and Jack and Nina drank his jolly good health in half the bottle, and afterward the Pullman conductor struggled successfully with the rest.
Altogether they were in high spirits, Jack especially, and Nina's thankfulness for being safely married to one of the best of men made her very amiable.
Mr. and Mrs. John Cresswell approached Buffalo again, from the West, at the close of Jack's two weeks' holidays. They decided that it would be better for Nina to go straight to Lockport on the train which connected with the one on which they were traveling. There was nothing for Nina to do in Buffalo but sign the register and get her marriage "lines" from Mr. Simpson, and Jack could do this, they thought, without a delay on her part to do so. To arrange about the register she had written her name on a narrow slip of paper which Jack could paste in the book at the parsonage. This they considered would suffice, and Nina went on to pay her intended visit to Sophronia B. Hopkins. The run to Lockport occupied only a short time, and then she went to her friend's house.
In the mean time Jack, who was not like the husband in Punch in that stage of the honeymoon when the presence of a friend "or even an enemy" would be a grateful change of companionship, walked up Main Street smoking a cigar and trying to make the best of his sudden bereavement. He said after the first ten minutes that he was infernally lonely, but still the flavor of the cigar was from fair to middling. And, after all, tobacco and quiet contemplation have a place in life which can not be altogether neglected, and they come in well again after a while, no matter what may have caused their temporary banishment.
He strolled leisurely up to the parsonage and inquired for Mr. Simpson. The maid-servant said he did not live there. Jack thought this was strange.
"I mean the clergyman who has charge of the church alongside."
"Oh, yes, Mr. Toxham lives here. He is inside. Will you walk in?"
Jack was ushered into a clergyman's library, where a thin man with a worn face was sitting. Jack bowed, introduced himself, and said he had come here to see Mr. Matthew Simpson, "one of the associate clergymen in St. James's Church close by."
"I do not think I know anybody by the name of Simpson," said the clergyman. "My name is Toxham. I have no associate clergyman with me in the neighboring church. My church is called St. Luke's, not St. James's. I don't think there is any St. James's Church in Buffalo." Jack grasped the back of the chair and unconsciously sat down to steady himself. A horrible fear overwhelmed him. His face grew ashen in hue, and the clergyman jumped up in a fright, thinking something was going to happen.