第68章 XXVII(2)

"In Allentown, New Hampshire, last Monday, the day you and father went to Saco. Ellen went with us. You needn't suppose it was much fun for me! Girls that think running away to be married is nothing but a lark, do not have to deceive a sister like you, nor have a father such as mine to reckon with afterwards."

"You thought of all that before, didn't you, child?"

"Nobody that hasn't already run away to be married once or twice could tell how it was going to feel! Never did I pass so unhappy a day! If Mark was not everything that is kind and gentle, he would have tipped me out of the sleigh into a snowbank and left me by the roadside to freeze. I might have been murdered instead of only married, by the way I behaved; but Mark and Ellen understood. Then, the very next day, Mark's father sent him up to Bridgton on business, and he had to go to Allentown first to return a friend's horse, so he couldn't break the news to father at once, as he intended."

"Does a New Hampshire marriage hold good in Maine?" asked Waitstill, still intent on the bare facts at the bottom of the romance.

"Well, of course," stammered Patty, some-what confused, "Maine has her own way of doing things, and wouldn't be likely to fancy New Hampshire's. But nothing can make it wicked or anything but according to law. Besides, Mark considered all the difficulties.

He is wonderfully clever, and he has a clerkship in a Portsmouth law office waiting for him; and that's where we are going to live, in New Hampshire, where we were married, and my darling sister will come soon and stay months and months with us."

"When is Mark coming back to arrange all this?"

"Late to-night or early to-morrow morning.

283

"Where did you go after you were married?"

"Where did I go?" echoed Patty, in a childish burst of tears.

"Where could I go? It took all day to be married--all day long, working and driving hard from sunrise to seven o'clock in the evening. Then when we reached the bridge, Mark dropped me, and I w alked up home in the dark, and went to bed without any supper, for fear that you and father would come back and catch me at it and ask why I was so late."

"My poor, foolish dear!" sighed Waitstill.

Patty's tears flowed faster at the first sound of sympathy in Waitstill's voice, for self-pity is very enfeebling. She fairly sobbed as she continued:--"So my only wedding-journey was the freezing drive back from Allentown, with Ellen crying all the way and wishing that she hadn't gone with us. Mark and I both say we'll never be married again so long as we live!"

"Where have you seen your husband from that day to this?"

"I haven't laid eyes on him!" said Patty, with a fresh burst of woe. "I have a certificate-thing, and a wedding-ring and a beautiful frock and hat that Mark bought in Boston, but no real husband. I'm no more married than ever I was! Don't you remember I said that Mark was sent away on Tuesday morning? And this is Thursday. I've had three letters from him; but I don't know, till we see how father takes it, when we can tell the Wilsons and start for Portsmouth. We shan't really call ourselves married till we get to Portsmouth; we promised each other that from the first. It isn't much like being a bride, never to see your bridegroom; to have a father who will fly into a passion when he hears that you are married; not to know whether your new family will like or despise you; and to have your only sister angered with you for the first time in her life!"

Waitstill's heart melted, and she lifted Patty's tear-stained face to hers and kissed it. "Well, dear, I would not have had you do this for the world, but it is done, and Mark seems to have been as wise as a man can be when he does an unwise thing. You are married, and you love each other. That's the comforting thing to me."

"We do," sobbed Patty. "No two people ever loved each other better than we; but it's been all spoiled for fear of father."

"I must say I dread to have him hear the news"; and Waitstill knitted her brows anxiously. "I hope it may be soon, and I think I ought to be here when he is told. Mark will never under-stand or bear with him, and there may be trouble that I could avert."

"I'll be here, too, and I'm not afraid! And Patty raised her head defiantly. "Father can unmarry us, that's why we acted in this miserable, secret, underhanded way. Somehow, though I haven't seen Mark since we went to Allentown, I am braver than I was last week, for now I've got somebody to take my part. I've a good mind to go upstairs and put on my gold beads and my wedding-ring, just to get used to them and to feel a little more married.--No: I c an't, after all, for there is father driving up the hill now, and he may come into the house. What brings him home at this hour?"

"I was expecting him every moment"; and Waitstill rose and stirred the fire." He took the pung and went to the Mills for grain."

"He hasn't anything in the back of the pung--and, oh, Waity! he is standing up now and whipping the horse with all his might. I n ever saw him drive like that before: what can be the matter? He can't have seen my wedding-ring, and only three people in all the world know about my being married."

Waitstill turned from the window, her heart beating a little faster." What three people know, three hundred are likely to know sooner or later. It may be a false alarm, but father is in a fury about something. He must not be told the news until he is in a better humor!"