Mrs. Baumhagen looked at her daughter in amazement. The pale, quiet girl had become as blooming as a rose. "It is the honeymoon still," she said to herself, and her eyes never ceased to follow her youngest child during the whole time of her stay.
The coffee-table was set out under the chestnuts. It was a beautiful spot. The eye glanced over the green lawn, past the magnificent trees to the quaint old dwelling-house with its high gables and its ivy-grown walls. The doors of the garden-hall stood open, and from the flagstaff fluttered gayly a black-and-white flag.
"An idyll like a picture by Voss," laughed the little judge.
The young host gallantly escorted his mother-in-law through the garden. Every cloud had vanished from his brow, he was cheerful and agreeable.
"But very sure of himself," Jenny remarked, later, to her mother. "He feels himself quite the host and master of the house."
The uncomfortable feeling which he had always had in his mother-in-law's presence, had disappeared. To her amazement he permitted himself once or twice quite calmly to contradict her. Arthur had never dared to do that. And Gertrude, how ridiculous! while she presided over the coffee in her calm way, her eyes were continually turning to him as soon as he spoke. "As you like, Frank,"--"What do you think, Frank?" etc. And when her mother hoped Gertrude would not fail to call on her Aunt Pauline on her birthday, the next day, she asked appealingly, "Can I, Frank? Can I have the carriage?"
"Certainly, Gertrude," was the reply.
Then Mrs. Baumhagen put down her dainty coffee cup and leaned back in her garden chair. The child was not in her right mind! that was too much. But Arthur Fredericks applauded loudly.
"Gertrude," he called out across the table, "talk to this--" he seized the hand of his wife who angrily tried to draw it away. "What does Katherine say as an amiable wife to her sister? Words that sound as sweet to us as a message from a better world."
"To be sure!" laughed Gertrude, not in the least offended by the ironical tone.