_Don't_ you
want to hear how bad I am?"
"No," I said, closing the discussion after an old fashion of the
Sloman cottage, "not until we two walk together to the Ledge
to-morrow, my little wife and I."
"Where's a card--your card, Charlie? It would be more proper-like, as
Mrs. Splinter would say, for you to write it."
"I will try," I said, taking out a card-case from my breast-pocket. As
I drew it forth my hand touched a package, Fanny Meyrick's packet.
Shall I give it to her now? I hesitated. No, we'll be married first in
the calm faith that each has in the other to-day, needing no outward
assurance or written word.
I penciled feebly, with a very shaky hand, my request that the doctor
would call at Hiram Splinter's, at his earliest convenience that
evening, to perform the ceremony of marriage between his young friend,
Bessie Stewart, and the subscriber. Hiram's eldest son, a youth of
eight, was swinging on the gate under our window. To him Bessie
entrusted the card, with many injunctions to give it into no other
hands than the doctor's own.
In less time than we had anticipated, as we looked out of the window
at the last pink glow of the sunset, the urchin reappeared, walking
with great strides beside a spare little-figure, whom we recognized as
the worthy doctor himself.
"Good gracious! he _is_ in a hurry!" said Bessie, retiring hastily
from the window; "and we have not said a word to Mrs.
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