It was very strange, all was very strange, but it comforted her. She rose up, and in the twilight of the soft spring evening she washed her face and combed her hair, and went down, like King David after his child was dead, to “eat bread.”
Her young people were not there. They had gone out again; she heard, with Mr. Dalziel, not Mr. Roy, who had sat reading in the parlor alone for upward of an hour. They were supposed to be golfing, but they staid out till long after it was possible to see balls or holes; and Miss Williams was beginning to be a little uneasy, when they all three walked in, David and Janetta with a rather sheepish air, and Helen beaming all over with mysterious delight.
How the young man had managed it—to propose to two sisters at once, at any rate to make love to one sister while the other was by—remained among the wonderful feats which David Dalziel, who had not too small an opinion of himself, was always ready for, and generally succeeded in; and if he did wear his heart somewhat “on his sleeve,” why, it was a very honest heart, and they must have been ill-natured “daws” indeed who took pleasure in “pecking at it.”
“Wish me joy, Auntie!” he cried, coming forward, beaming all over, the instant the girls had disappeared to take their hats off. “I’ve been and gone and done it, and it’s all right. I didn’t intend it just yet, but he drove me to it, for which I’m rather obliged to him. He can’t get her now. Janetta’s mine!”
There was a boyish triumph in his air; in fact, his whole conduct was exceedingly juvenile, but so simple, frank, and sincere as to be quite irresistible.
I fear Miss Williams was a very weak-minded woman, or would be so considered by a great part of the world—the exceedingly wise and prudent and worldly-minded “world.” Here were two young people, one twenty-two, the other eighteen, with—it could hardly be said “not a half-penny,” but still a very small quantity of half-pennies, between them—and they had not only fallen in love, but engaged themselves to married! She ought to have been horrified, to have severely reproached them for their imprudence, used all her influence and, if needs be, her authority, to stop the whole thing; advising David not to bind himself to any girl till he was much older, and his prospects secured; and reasoning with Janetta on the extreme folly of a long engagement, and how very much better it would be for her to pause, and make some “good” marriage with a man of wealth and position, who could keep her comfortably.
All this, no doubt, was what a prudent and far-seeing mother or friend ought to have said and done. Miss Williams did no such thing, and said not a single word. She only kissed her “children”—Helen too, whose innocent delight was the prettiest thing to behold—then sat down and made tea for them all, as if nothing had happened.
But such events do not happen without making a slight stir in a family, especially such a quiet family as that at the cottage. Besides, the lovers were too childishly happy to be at all reticent over their felicity. Before David was turned away that night to the hotel which he and Mr. Roy both inhabited, every body in the house knew quite well that Mr. Dalziel and Miss Janetta were to be married.