第119章 CHAPTER XXX(2)

"Oh, I shall. I'm like that Scotch girl in the play Mrs. Wyeth took me to see in Boston--Bunty, her name was. She made me think of myself more than once, although she was ever so much more clever.

At the end of the play she said to her sweetheart, 'William, I must tell ye this: if I marry ye I'll aye be managin' ye.' She meant she couldn't help it. Neither can I. I'm afraid I'm a born manager."

Crawford stooped and kissed her.

"Do you remember William's answer?" he asked. "I do. It was:

'Bunty, I'll glory in my shame.' Manage all you like, my lady, I'll glory in it."

The plan did work out and it was this: Doctor Harley, who had practiced medicine for forty-one years in South Harniss, was thinking of retiring after two more years of active work. He was willing to sell out his practice at the end of that time. He liked Crawford, had taken a fancy to him on the occasion of his first visit to the town when he was a guest of the Keiths. Crawford, after Mary had suggested the idea to him, called upon the old doctor. Before the end of the week it was arranged that after Crawford's final season of college and hospital work he was to come to South Harniss, work with Doctor Harley as assistant for another year, and then buy out the practice and, as Captain Shad said, "put up his own shingle."

"I don't mean to stay here always," Crawford said, "but it will do me good to be here for a time. Harley's a tiptop old chap and a thoroughly competent general practitioner. He'll give me points that may be invaluable by and by. And a country practice is the best of training."

Mary nodded. "Yes," she said. "And at the end of this winter I shall have Simeon Crocker well broken in as manager of the store.

And I can sell the tea-room, I think. My uncles don't care much for that, anyway. They will be perfectly happy with the store to putter about in and with Simeon to take the hard work and care off their shoulders they can putter to their hearts' content."

"But suppose Simeon doesn't make it pay!" suggested Crawford.

"That's at least a possibility. Everyone isn't a Napoleon--I should say a Queen Elizabeth--of finance and business like yourself, young lady."

Mary's confidence was not in the least shaken.

"It will pay," she said. "If the townspeople and the summer cottagers don't buy enough--well, you and I can help out. There is that money in the West, you know."

He nodded emphatically.

"Good!" he cried. "You're right. It will be a chance for us--just a little chance. And they will never know."

He went away at the end of the week, but he came back for Christmas and again at Easter and again in the latter part of May. And soon after that, on a day in early June, he stood, with Sam Keith at his elbow, in the parlor of the white house by the shore, while Edna Keith played "Here Comes the Bride" on the piano which had been hired for the occasion; and, with her hand in Zoeth's arm, and with Captain Shadrach and Barbara Howe just behind, Mary walked between the two lines of smiling, teary friends to meet him.

It was a lovely wedding; everyone said so, and as there probably never was a wedding which was not pronounced lovely by friends and relatives, we may be doubly certain of the loveliness of this. And there never was a more beautiful bride. All brides are beautiful, more or less, but this one was more. Isaiah, who had been favored with a peep at the rehearsal on the previous evening, was found later on by Shadrach in the kitchen in a state of ecstatic incoherence.

"I swan to godfreys!" cried Isaiah. "Ain't--ain't she an angel, though! Did you ever see anything prettier'n she is in them clothes and with that--that moskeeter net on her head? An angel--yes, sir-ee! one of them cherrybins out of the Bible, that's what she is.

And to think it's our Mary-'Gusta! Say, Cap'n Shad, will checkered pants be all right to wear with my blue coat tomorrow? I burnt a hole in my lavender ones tryin' to press the wrinkles out of 'em.

And I went down to the wharf in 'em last Sunday and they smell consider'ble of fish, besides."

The wedding company was small, but select. Judge Baxter and his wife were there and the Keiths--Mrs. Keith condescended to ornament the occasion; some of the "best people" had seen fit to make much of Mary Lathrop and Mrs. Keith never permitted herself to be very far behind the best people in anything--and Mrs. Wyeth was there, and Miss Pease, and Mr. Green who had received an invitation and had come from Boston, and Doctor Harley, and Simeon Crocker and his "steady company," one of the tea-room young ladies, and Annabel and--and--well, a dozen or fifteen more.