"I'm coming to live at your house," answered the Story Girl rather timidly. She did not know how Felicity might like that. But Felicity took it rather well.
"You've been here most of the time anyhow, so it'll just be that you'll sleep and eat here, too. But what's to become of Uncle Roger?"
"Aunt Olivia says he'll have to get married, too. But Uncle Roger says he'd rather hire a housekeeper than marry one, because in the first case he could turn her off if he didn't like her, but in the second case he couldn't."
"There'll be a lot of cooking to do for the wedding," reflected Felicity in a tone of satisfaction.
"I s'pose Aunt Olivia will want some rusks made. I hope she has plenty of tooth-powder laid in," said Dan.
"It's a pity you don't use some of that tooth-powder you're so fond of talking about yourself," retorted Felicity. "When anyone has a mouth the size of yours the teeth show so plain."
"I brush my teeth every Sunday," asseverated Dan.
"Every Sunday! You ought to brush them every DAY."
"Did anyone ever hear such nonsense?" demanded Dan sincerely.
"Well, you know, it really does say so in the Family Guide," said Cecily quietly.
"Then the Family Guide people must have lots more spare time than I have," retorted Dan contemptuously.
"Just think, the Story Girl will have her name in the papers if she's bridesmaid," marvelled Sara Ray.
"In the Halifax papers, too," added Felix, "since Dr. Seton is a Halifax man. What is his first name?"
"Robert."
"And will we have to call him Uncle Robert?"
"Not until he's married to her. Then we will, of course."
"I hope your Aunt Olivia won't disappear before the ceremony," remarked Sara Ray, who was surreptitiously reading "The Vanquished Bride," by Valeria H. Montague in the Family Guide.
"I hope Dr. Seton won't fail to show up, like your cousin Rachel Ward's beau," said Peter.
"That makes me think of another story I read the other day about Great-uncle Andrew King and Aunt Georgina," laughed the Story Girl. "It happened eighty years ago. It was a very stormy winter and the roads were bad. Uncle Andrew lived in Carlisle, and Aunt Georgina—she was Miss Georgina Matheson then—lived away up west, so he couldn't get to see her very often. They agreed to be married that winter, but Georgina couldn't set the day exactly because her brother, who lived in Ontario, was coming home for a visit, and she wanted to be married while he was home. So it was arranged that she was to write Uncle Andrew and tell him what day to come. She did, and she told him to come on a Tuesday. But her writing wasn't very good and poor Uncle Andrew thought she wrote Thursday. So on Thursday he drove all the way to Georgina's home to be married. It was forty miles and a bitter cold day. But it wasn't any colder than the reception he got from Georgina. She was out in the porch, with her head tied up in a towel, picking geese. She had been all ready Tuesday, and her friends and the minister were there, and the wedding supper prepared. But there was no bridegroom and Georgina was furious. Nothing Uncle Andrew could say would appease her. She wouldn't listen to a word of explanation, but told him to go, and never show his nose there again. So poor Uncle Andrew had to go ruefully home, hoping that she would relent later on, because he was really very much in love with her."
"And did she?" queried Felicity.
"She did. Thirteen years exactly from that day they were married. It took her just that long to forgive him."
"It took her just that long to find out she couldn't get anybody else," said Dan, cynically.
CHAPTER XIV. A PRODIGAL RETURNS
Aunt Olivia and the Story Girl lived in a whirlwind of dressmaking after that, and enjoyed it hugely. Cecily and Felicity also had to have new dresses for the great event, and they talked of little else for a fortnight. Cecily declared that she hated to go to sleep because she was sure to dream that she was at Aunt Olivia's wedding in her old faded gingham dress and a ragged apron.
"And no shoes or stockings," she added, "and I can't move, and everyone walks past and looks at my feet."
"That's only in a dream," mourned Sara Ray, "but I may have to wear my last summer's white dress to the wedding. It's too short, but ma says it's plenty good for this summer. I'll be so mortified if I have to wear it."
"I'd rather not go at all than wear a dress that wasn't nice," said Felicity pleasantly.
"I'd go to the wedding if I had to go in my school dress," cried Sara Ray. "I've never been to anything. I wouldn't miss it for the world."
"My Aunt Jane always said that if you were neat and tidy it didn't matter whether you were dressed fine or not," said Peter.
"I'm sick and tired of hearing about your Aunt Jane," said Felicity crossly.
Peter looked grieved but held his peace. Felicity was very hard on him that spring, but his loyalty never wavered. Everything she said or did was right in Peter's eyes.
"It's all very well to be neat and tidy," said Sara Ray, "but I like a little style too."
"I think you'll find your mother will get you a new dress after all," comforted Cecily. "Anyway, nobody will notice you because everyone will be looking at the bride. Aunt Olivia will make a lovely bride. Just think how sweet she'll look in a white silk dress and a floating veil."
"She says she is going to have the ceremony performed out here in the orchard under her own tree," said the Story Girl. "Won't that be romantic? It almost makes me feel like getting married myself."
"What a way to talk," rebuked Felicity, "and you only fifteen."
"Lots of people have been married at fifteen," laughed the Story Girl. "Lady Jane Gray was."
"But you are always saying that Valeria H. Montague's stories are silly and not true to life, so that is no argument," retorted Felicity, who knew more about cooking than about history, and evidently imagined that the Lady Jane Gray was one of Valeria's titled heroines.
The wedding was a perennial source of conversation among us in those days; but presently its interest palled for a time in the light of another quite tremendous happening. One Saturday night Peter's mother called to take him home with her for Sunday. She had been working at Mr. James Frewen's, and Mr. Frewen was driving her home. We had never seen Peter's mother before, and we looked at her with discreet curiosity. She was a plump, black-eyed little woman, neat as a pin, but with a rather tired and care-worn face that looked as if it should have been rosy and jolly. Life had been a hard battle for her, and I rather think that her curly-headed little lad was all that had kept heart and spirit in her. Peter went home with her and returned Sunday evening. We were in the orchard sitting around the Pulpit Stone, where we had, according to the custom of the households of King, been learning our golden texts and memory verses for the next Sunday School lesson. Paddy, grown sleek and handsome again, was sitting on the stone itself, washing his jowls.
Peter joined us with a very queer expression on his face. He seemed bursting with some news which he wanted to tell and yet hardly liked to.
"Why are you looking so mysterious, Peter?" demanded the Story Girl.
"What do you think has happened?" asked Peter solemnly.
"What has?"
"My father has come home," answered Peter.
The announcement produced all the sensation he could have wished. We crowded around him in excitement.
"Peter! When did he come back?"
"Saturday night. He was there when ma and I got home. It give her an awful turn. I didn't know him at first, of course."
"Peter Craig, I believe you are glad your father has come back," cried the Story Girl.
"'Course I'm glad," retorted Peter.