“Today is my oldest daughter’s day. I must think of nobody but Patience and make her coming home with her husband as glad as can be.”
She spoke aloud, to make her resolution stronger and walked back towards the house, gathering nasturtiums and asparagus as she went, to decorate the fresh and pretty parlor, with its new white muslin curtains and wall paper and the piano which Harry Boland had sent.
“It’s perfectly lovely, mother,” Patience was saying to her in this room within the hour, Patience whom everybody in Millville loved, standing radiant and happy beside her equally radiant bridegroom. “How did you ever get those flowers to trail over that picture as if they just grew there?”
“You’re a great success as a decorator, and we can’t begin to thank you enough,” said Harry Boland. “I think Patience and I are in great luck that we can make our home with you. It’s all settled that I’m to have that office opposite the court-house, going to buy and sell real estate and work up a regular business.”
“Yes, and mother, Harry finds that a whole lot of these cottages the mill people live in are really his own, from his mother’s estate directly to him. He’s going to put them all in decent order.”
“Do you remember Michael Grogan? He is going to help us do things in Millville. He has promised to build us a club house and dance hall, a social center for the mill young people if you and Patience will help run it.”
“That’s fine. Young folks need their fun,” responded Mrs. Welcome heartily. “Come along, Patey dear, and see the cakes mother has been baking for you and Harry.”
Mary Randall and Michael Grogan, Harvey Spencer and his sister and brother-in-law were the five guests who assembled in the late afternoon to honor the home-coming of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Boland.
Michael Grogan came first, arriving in a carriage of the hack type from the station. He brought a huge bouquet of roses for the bride and a case of grape-juice for the cheer of the festivity.
At supper he proposed the health of the young pair.