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Read Ebook: Mary Minds Her Business by Weston George
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Ebook has 2109 lines and 62547 words, and 43 pages
Whereupon he made a gesture that wasn't far from despair--and in that gesture, such as only those can make who know in their hearts that they have shot the albatross, this preface brings itself to a close and at last my story begins.
"Patty," said Miss Cordelia one morning, "have you noticed Josiah lately?"
"Yes," nodded Miss Patricia, her eyes a little brighter than they should have been.
"Do you know," continued the other, her voice dropping to a whisper, "I'm afraid--if he keeps on--the way he is--"
"Oh, no, Cordelia! You know as well as I do--there has never been anything like that in our family."
Nevertheless the two sisters looked at each other with awe-stricken eyes, and then their arms went around each other and they eased their hearts in the immemorial manner.
"You know, he worries because we are the last of the Spencers," said Cordelia, "and the family dies with us. Even if you or I had children, I don't think he would take it so hard--"
A wistful look passed over their faces, such as you might expect to see on those who had repented too late and stood looking through St. Peter's gate at scenes in which they knew they could never take a part.
"But I am forty-eight," sighed Cordelia.
"And I--I am fifty--"
The two sisters had been writing when this conversation started. They were busy on a new generation of the Spencer-Spicer genealogy, and if you have ever engaged on a task like that, you will know the correspondence it requires. But now for a time their pens were forgotten and they sat looking at each other over the gatelegged table which served as desk. They were still both remarkably good-looking, though marked with that delicacy of material and workmanship--reminiscent of old china--which seems to indicate the perfect type of spinster-hood. Here and there in their hair gleamed touches of silver, and their cheeks might have reminded you of tinted apples which had lightly been kissed with the frost.
And so they sat looking at each other, intently, almost breathlessly, each suddenly moved by the same question and each wishing that the other would speak.
For the second time it was Cordelia who broke the silence.
"Patty--!"
"Yes, dear?" breathed Patty, and left her lips slightly parted.
"I wonder if Josiah--is too old--to marry again! Of course," she hurriedly added, "he is fifty-two--but it seems to me that one of the Spicers--I think it was Captain Abner Spicer--had children until he was sixty--although by a younger wife, of course."
They looked it up and in so doing they came across an Ezra Babcock, father-in-law of the Third Josiah Spencer, who had had a son proudly born to him in his sixty-fourth year.
They gazed at each other then, those two maiden sisters, like two conspirators in their precious innocence.
"If we could find Josiah a young wife--" said the elder at last.
"Oh, Cordelia!" breathed Patty, "if, indeed, we only could!"
Which was really how it started.
The girl's name was Martha Berger and her home was in California. She had come east to attend the wedding of her brother and was now staying with the Pearsons a few weeks before returning west. Her age was twenty-six. She had no parents, very little money, and taught French, English and Science in the high school back home.
"Have you any brothers or sisters!" asked Miss Cordelia, with a side glance toward Miss Patty.
"Only five brothers and five sisters," laughed Martha.
For a moment it might be said that Miss Cordelia purred.
"Any of them married?" she continued.
"All but me."
"My dear! ... You don't mean to say that they have made you an aunt already?"
Martha paused with that inward look which generally accompanies mental arithmetic.
"Only about seventeen times," she finally laughed again.
When their guest had gone, the two sisters fairly danced around each other.
"Oh, Patty!" exulted Miss Cordelia, "I'm sure she's a fruitful vine!"
There is something inexorable in the purpose of a maiden lady--perhaps because she has no minor domestic troubles to distract her; and when you have two maiden ladies working on the same problem, and both of them possessed of wealth and unusual intelligence--!
They started by taking Martha to North East Harbor for the balance of the summer, and then to keep her from going west in the fall, they engaged her to teach them French that winter at quite a fabulous salary. They also took her to Boston and bought her some of the prettiest dresses imaginable; and the longer they knew her, the more they liked her; and the more they liked her, the more they tried to enlist her sympathies in behalf of poor Josiah--and the more they tried to throw their brother into Martha's private company.
"Look here," he said one day, when his two sisters were pushing him too hard. "What's all this excitement about Martha? Who is she, anyway?"
"Why, don't you know!" Cordelia sweetly asked him, and drawing a full breath she added: "Martha--is--your--future--wife--"
If you had been there, you would have been pardoned for thinking that the last of the Spencers had suddenly discovered that he was sitting upon a remonstrative bee.
The two sisters smiled at him--rather nervously, it is true, but still they kept their hands upon their brother's shoulders, as though they were two nurses soothing a patient and saying: "There, now ... The-e-e-ere ... Just be quiet and you'll feel better in a little while."
"Yes, dear," whispered Cordelia, her mouth ever so close to his ear. "Your future wife--and the mother of your future children--"
"Nonsense, nonsense--" muttered Josiah, breaking away quite flustered. "I'm--I'm too old--"
Almost speaking in concert they told him about Captain Abner Spencer who had children until he was sixty, and Ezra Babcock, father-in-law of the third Josiah Spencer, who had a son proudly born to him in his sixty-fourth year.
"And she's such a lovely girl," said Cordelia earnestly. "Patty and I are quite in love with her ourselves--"
"And think what it would mean to your peace of mind to have another son--"
"And what it would mean to Spencer & Son--!"
Josiah groaned at that. As a matter of fact he hadn't a chance to escape. His two sisters had never allowed themselves to be courted, but they must have had their private ideas of how such affairs should be conducted, for they took Josiah in hand and put him through his paces with a speed which can only be described as breathless.
Flowers, candy, books, jewellery, a ring, the ring--the two maiden sisters lived a winter of such romance that they nearly bloomed into youth again themselves; and whenever Josiah had the least misgiving about a man of fifty-two marrying a girl of twenty-six, they whispered to him: "Think what it will mean to Spencer & Son--" And whenever Martha showed the least misgivings they whispered to her: "That's only his way, my dear; you mustn't mind that." And once Cordelia added : "Of course, there has to be a man at a wedding, but I want you to feel that you would be marrying us, as much as you would be marrying Josiah. You would be his wife, of course, but you would be our little sister, too; and Patty and I would make you just as happy as we could--"
Later they were glad they had told her this.
It was a quiet wedding and for a time nothing happened; although if you could have seen the two maiden sisters at church on a Sunday morning, you would have noticed that after the benediction they seemed to be praying very earnestly indeed--even as Sarah prayed in the temple so many years ago. There was this curious difference, however: Sarah had prayed for herself, but these two innocent spinsters were praying for another.
Then one morning, never to be forgotten, Martha thought to herself at the breakfast table, "I'll tell them as soon as breakfast is over."
But she didn't.
She thought, "I'll take them into the garden and tell them there--"
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