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Updated: May 29, 2025
"If only I could 'a' looked ahead," smiled Uncle Bart quizzically to himself, "I'd 'a' had thirteen sons and daughters an' married off one of 'em every year. That would 'a' made Abby's good temper kind o' permanent." Cephas was content, too. There was a good deal in being settled and having "the whole doggoned business" off your hands.
The wedding took place in Abby's parlor, with only Abby herself and a single neighbour for witnesses. A little crowd gathered round the door, however, to see how Jacques De Arthenay looked when he'd made a fool of himself, as they expressed it.
He was bendin' over Luella layin' there with her yellow hair all streamin' and her pretty pink-and-white face all pale, and her blue eyes like stars gone out, and he was holdin' onto her hand and smoothin' her forehead, and tellin' me to get the brandy in Aunt Abby's room, and I was sure as I wanted to be that Luella had got somebody else to hang onto, now Aunt Abby was gone, and I thought of poor Erastus Miller, and I sort of pitied the poor young Doctor, led away by a pretty face, and I made up my mind I'd see what I could do.
In this dilemma, a visitor came to Aunt Abby's; one of her boy-favorites, George Means, from an adjoining State. Sensible, plain looking, agreeable, talented, he could not long be a stranger to any one who wished to know him. Jane was accustomed to sit much with Aunt Abby always; her presence now seemed neces- sary to assist in entertaining this youthful friend.
He looked almost as if he had gypsy blood in him, and he came of a family which was further on the outskirts of society than the Louds had been. When Granville replied "nothing much" to Abby's question, Amos Lee frowned with a swift contraction of dissent, but did not speak until Abby had retorted. "You needn't talk that way to me, Granville Joy," said she. "You can't cheat me.
In the social estimates of Elgin the Johnsons were "nice people," Dr Henry was a fine old figure in the town, and Abby's chances were good enough. At all events, when she opened her doors as a bride, receiving for three afternoons in her wedding dress, everybody had "called."
Then it seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform. Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be able to go out and fight for what one wanted!
Next came the hymn, generally at that day one of Isaac Watts's. The singers, fifteen or twenty in number, sat in a raised gallery opposite the pulpit, and there was a rod in front hung with red curtains to hide them when sitting down. Any one was free to join, which perhaps accounted for Aunt Abby's strictures as to time and tune.
Aunt Abby's better." The man stared, then he whistled softly. "Gorry!" he muttered, as he turned away. If Jim and Ella had supposed that they could keep their aunt from attending her own "funeral" as Herrick persisted in calling it they soon found their mistake. Mrs. Darling heard the bells of the first arrival. "I guess mebbe I'll git up an' set up a spell," she announced calmly to Ella.
I met her at the bridge when I was coming home from the woods, and I saw her safely to Uncle Bart's door. I don't know why we speak of it as Uncle Bart's when it is really Aunt Abby's! I next met Mark, who had fairly flown from Bridgton on the wings of love, arriving hours ahead of time.
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