The Debtor Part 41

"Why, Arthur, where did you get it?" his wife had cried, involuntarily; and he had laughed and refused to tell her.

Ina herself, while she received the ring with the greatest delight, was secretly a little troubled. "I am afraid poor papa ought not to have given me such a present as this," she said to Charlotte, when the two girls were in their room that night. As she spoke she was holding the pearl to the lamp-light and watching the beautiful pink lights. It was a tinted pearl.

"It is a little different, because you are going away, and papa will never buy you things again," said Charlotte. "I should not worry, dear." For the few days before her marriage, Charlotte had gotten a habit of treating her sister with the most painstaking consideration for her nerves and her feelings, as if she were an invalid. She was herself greatly troubled at the thought that her father had overtasked his resources to purchase such a valuable thing, but she would not for worlds have intimated such a thing to Ina.

"Well, I do worry," said Ina. "I cannot help it. It was too much for poor papa to do." She even shed a few tears over the pearl, and Charlotte kissed and coddled her a good deal for comfort.

"It is such a beauty, dear," she said. "Look at it and take comfort in it, darling."

"Yes, it is a beauty," sobbed Ina. "I never saw such a pearl except that one of poor papa's, the one he has in his scarf-pin that belonged to that friend of his who died, you know."

"Yes, dear," said Charlotte, "I know. It is another just such a beauty. Don't cry any more, honey. Think how happy you are to have it."

But Charlotte herself, after she had gone to bed in her own little room, had sobbed very softly lest her sister should hear her, until Ina was asleep. Her sister's remarks had brought a suspicion to her own mind. "Poor papa!" she kept whispering softly, to herself. "Poor papa!" It seemed to her that her heart was breaking with understanding of and pity for her father.

Charlotte's own gift to Ina had been some pieces of embroidery. She was the only one in the family who excelled in any kind of handicraft. "Ina will like this better than anything," she had told her aunt Anna, "and then it will not tax poor papa, either. It will cost nothing."

Her aunt had looked at her a minute, then suddenly thrown her arms around her and kissed her. "Charlotte, you little honey, you are the best of the lot!" she had said.

Charlotte herself, the night of the wedding, was looking rather pale and serious. Many observed that she was the least good-looking of the family. Several Banbridge young men essayed to make themselves agreeable to her, but she did not know it. She was very busy. Besides their one maid there were the waiters sent by the caterer, and Eddy was exceedingly troublesome. He was a nervous boy, and unless directly under his father's eye, almost beyond restraint when impressed, as he was then, with an exaggerated sense of his own importance. His activities took especially the form of indiscriminate and superfluous helping the guests to refreshments, until the waiters waxed fairly murderous, and one of them even appealed to Anna Carroll, intimating in Eddy's hearing that unless the young gentleman left matters to them the supply of salad would run short.

"Why didn't we have more, then?" inquired Eddy, quite audibly, to the delight of all within ear-shot. "I thought we were going to have plenty for everybody this time."

"Eddy dear," whispered Charlotte, taking his little arm, "come with me into the hall and help me put back some roses that have fallen out of the big vase. I am afraid I shall get some water on my gown if I touch them, and I noticed just now that some one had brushed against them and jostled some out."

"Charlotte, why didn't we have salad enough?" persisted Eddy, as he followed his sister, pulling back a little at her leading hand.

"Hush, dear; we have enough, only you had better leave it to the waiters, you know."

"Everybody has taken it that I have pa.s.sed it to," said Eddy. "I have given that gentleman over there four plates heaped up."

"Oh, hush, Eddy dear!" whispered Charlotte, in an agony.

By this time they were in the hall, and Eddy, still full of grievances, was picking up the scattered roses. "I suppose there won't be enough salad for my friend and his mother when they come,"

said he, further.

"Who are your friend and his mother, darling?"

"Mr. Anderson and his mother," declared Eddy, promptly. "He is the best man in this town, and so is his mother."

"Mr. Anderson, dear?"

"Yes. You know who I mean. You ought to know. He always lets us have all we want out of his store. He and his mother are the nicest people in this town except us."

Charlotte looked at her little brother and her face flushed softly.

"But, dear," she whispered, "they did not have any invitations to the reception."

"Yes, they did," declared Eddy, triumphantly.

"Why, who sent them?"

"I did," said Eddy.

Charlotte regarded her little brother with a curious expression. It was amused, and yet strangely puzzled, but more as if the puzzle were in her own mind than elsewhere. It was as if she were trying to remember something.

"Don't you think he is a nice man?" asked Eddy, looking sharply at her.

"Yes, dear, I think so. I don't know anything to the contrary."

"Don't you think he is handsome?"

Suddenly Charlotte saw Anderson's face in her thoughts for the first time very plainly. "Yes," she said, "of course. Let us go in the other room, Eddy, and see if Amy doesn't want anything." She led Eddy forcibly into the parlor.

"It is so late, I am afraid he won't come," the little boy said, disappointedly, when the clock on the mantel struck eleven just as they entered.

It was not long after that when the company began to disperse. The bride and groom were to take a midnight-train, and the bride and her sister stole away up-stairs for the changing of the bridal for the travelling costume.

Charlotte unfastened her sister's wedding-gown, and she was striving her best to keep the tears back. Ina, on the contrary, was gayer than usual.

"It is very odd," said she, as Charlotte hooked the collar of her gray travelling-gown, "how a girl looks forward to getting married, all her life, and thinks more of it than anything else, and how, after all, it is nothing at all. You can remember that I said so, Charlotte, when you come to get married. You needn't dread it as if it were some tremendous undertaking. It isn't, you know."

"You speak exactly as if you had died, and were telling me not to dread dying," said Charlotte. She laughed, and the laugh was almost a sob.

"What an idea!" cried Ina, laughing. "Of course I am very sad at leaving home and you all, you darling, but the getting married is not so much, after all. You will find that I am right."

"I shall never get married," said Charlotte.

"Nonsense, honey! 'Deed you will."

"No, I shall not. I shall stay with papa."

"Yes, you will. Say, honey, Robert"--Ina said Robert quite easily and prettily now--"Robert has a stunning cousin, young enough to be his son. His name is Floyd--Floyd Arms. Isn't that a dear name? And his father has just died, and he has the next place to ours."

"Don't be foolish, dear."

"Robert says he is a fine fellow."

"I know all about him. I have seen Floyd Arms," said Charlotte, rather contemptuously.

"Oh, so you have! He was home that last time you were in Acton, wasn't he? You spoke of him when you came home."

"Yes, the last term I was at school," said Charlotte. "Let me pin your veil, sweetheart."

"Don't you think he was handsome?"

"No, I don't, not so very," said Charlotte.

"Oh, Charlotte, where did you ever see a handsomer man, unless it was papa or Robert?"