The occasion then was a wedding, the marriage of Sarah, the fourth Hoffner daughter, to a Gibbsville young man who had been a Zeta Psi at the University. Samuel Stokes was younger than Abraham Lockwood and no close friend, but it was an important wedding. A two-coach special train took Gibbsville guests by way of Reading and Fort Penn, a distance of 105 miles by rail. Abraham Lockwood and six other Swedish Haven guests made the eleven-mile trip in the newer of the Lockwood stages.
The ceremony took place at noon, followed by what was called a banquet on the Hoffner lawn. There was champagne in barely sufficient quantity for the wedding toasts, but there was no dancing. It was a hot day, and the out-of-town guests, their duty performed, were beginning to look homeward. Abraham Lockwood, looking at his watch, was about to round up his fellow passengers for the trip back to Swedish Haven when Adelaide Hoffner, in her bridesmaid’s dress, came up to him. “I saw you look at your watch. Are you going home already?” she said.
“I’m afraid we must, Miss Hoffner. I think we’re in for a thunder shower.”
“That’s too bad, then. I was tolt to inwite you to a party. Coultn’t I persuate you to stay a while?”
“Well, if anyone could, you could.”
“Ach, now.”
“Who’s having the party and what is it and where is it?”
“Some of the young ones, we’re going ower to Barbara Shellenberger’s place. Stay a while. There’ll be a lot of pretty girls and Mr. Shellenberger bought more champagne. More than my father bought.”
“Who told you to invite me? I’m not one of the young ones.”
“I was tolt to inwite anyone I felt like, you forced me to atmit.”
“Well, in that case I couldn’t possibly say no, could I?”
“You better not.”
“Do we walk? Is it far?”
“There it is, so. The white brick on the corner. Can you walk it?”
“I can walk it.”
“I was afrait you’t say it was too far for such an olt person like yourself.”
Abraham Lockwood arranged to have the others return to Swedish Haven without him, and he accompanied Adelaide Hoffner to the Shellenberger party. The house was cool, even with the two dozen young men and women who were enjoying the unexpected release from the sobering presence of their elders. The young men were from the colleges—Lafayette, Muhlenberg, Franklin & Marshall, Lebanon Valley—and wore their fraternity pins on their lapels. Soon they would return to their shyness, but at the moment they and the girls were chattering, being reintroduced, getting names straight, laughing over nothing, rather desperately wanting to be gay together.
“As you can readily see, I shouldn’t have come,” said Abraham Lockwood. “To them I’m an old fossil.”
“But not to me. I’m older than those girls.”
“Yes. You must be two years older than some of them.”
“You and I will go sit in the hall, say?”
“That’s fine,” said Abraham Lockwood.
“I wonter where is the champagne? Ah, here it comes. Take two glasses and then you can have mine.”
“Don’t you like champagne?”
“I had enough. I took an extra to give myself the courage to inwite you to the party. My Daddy was watching me to see if I drank too much of the toasts.”
Abraham Lockwood lifted two glasses from the tray offered by the Negro maid. He handed a glass to Adelaide Hoffner. “Well, here’s to us,” he said.
She touched his glass with hers but did not drink.
“Not drinking?”
“You don’t want me to get intoxicatet, do you?”
“No, not if you don’t.”
“I don’t. Do you like Sam?”
“Sam? Oh, Sam Stokes. Yes, I like him. I don’t know any reason why I shouldn’t like him. Do you have reservations about him?”
“No, not for Sarah. My sister. But I wouldn’t marry him.”
“Well, you never will now, that’s sure.”
“I newer would ewer. Gootness, I’m having trouble with my wees and my wubbleyews. I’m so Dutchy already yet. My Daddy wasted his money at Miss Holbrook’s.”
“Miss Holbrook’s in Fort Penn?”
“I went there two years as a boarting stutent already yet.”
“Now you’re putting it on. What’s the matter, Adelaide? You are Adelaide, aren’t you?”
“How dit you know?”
“I deduced it. All the girls and most of the young men called you Adelaide, so I deduced that that was your name. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing serious. Just thinking about Sarah. Now she’s locked together with a man. What if she doesn’t like it? She’s still locked with him. For that matter, what if he doesn’t like it?”
“Well, that is serious.”
“Yes, it is. I didn’t mean it wasn’t serious. I meant it wasn’t anything for me to fret about. Is that why you’re still single?”
“Maybe. I haven’t had time to think of matrimony.”
“Then you must have thought about it a great deal.”
“Why?”
“Well, you’re handsome and wealthy, and the only way you could have stayed single was by making up your mind to. Therefore, you gave it a lot of thought, so?”
“You’re right.”
She turned and faced him. “You’re experienced, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I knew that, all right.”
“How?”
She smiled. “How? I could tell by the way you looked at the girls. A man without experience doesn’t look at the girls that way.”
“How should I look at them?”
“You can’t change the way you look at them, not now any more. That’s what experience does to a person. And girls know when a man is experienced.”
“Woman’s instinct?”
“Yes. It warns them. But the warning doesn’t always do any good.”
“Where did you learn all this? At Miss Holbrook’s?”
“There I never learned anything. Yes, how to serve tea. How to curtsey if I ever meet the Queen of England. I didn’t learn at Miss Holbrook’s. I taught.” She laughed.
“You taught?” he said. “What?”
“I’d rather not say. Certain things you learn on the farm. My Daddy has a farm two miles out.”
“Oh, I understand. And you taught the girls at Miss Holbrook’s about a calf being born.”
“Calf? Babies, yet!”
“Well, that’s something I’ve never seen. Would you like to teach me?”
She blushed and looked at him with alarm. “No.” The word was more a protest than an answer. “I talk too much for my own good.”
“Are you afraid of me? You look it.”
“I don’t know. Yes, I guess so.”
“Would you like me to leave?”
“Stay, but don’t talk such a way. It was my fault.”
“Would you like to kiss me, Adelaide?”
“Sure, but I’m not going to.”
“Would you like me to kiss you?”
“Stop doing that.”
“I’m not doing anything. I’m asking you a question.”
“You’re experienced. You know what you’re doing.”
“Yes, I do. And you do want to kiss me, don’t you?”
“Yes, but I’m not going to.”
“And you want me to kiss you, don’t you? To put my arms around you.”