one, and the faces of the older generations grew soft beneath it, and pensive eyes became lustrous, and into pale cheeks the rosy tint came like an echo faintly back for a short hour. They made so little sound in their quiet happiness of congratulation that it might have been a dream; and they were so few that the house with the sense of its memories was not lost with the movement and crowding, but seemed still to preside over the whole, and send down its benediction. When it was my turn to shake the hands of bride and groom, John asked: "What did your friend do with your advice?" And I replied, "He has taken it.' "Perhaps not that," John returned, "but you must have helped him to see his way. When the bride came to cut the cake, she called me to her and fulfilled her promise. "You have always liked my baking," she said. "Then you made it after all," I answered. "I would not have been married without doing so," she declared sweetly. When the time came for them to go away, they were surrounded with affectionate God-speeds; but Miss Josephine St. Michael waited to be the last, standing a little apart, her severe and chiselled face turned aside, and seeming to watch a mocking-bird that was perched in his cage at a window halfway up the stairs. "He is usually not so silent," Miss Josephine said to me. "I suppose we are too many visitors for him." Then I saw that the old lady, beneath her severity, was deeply moved; and almost at once John and Eliza came down the stairs. Miss Josephine took each of them to her heart, but she did not trust herself to speak; and a single tear rolled down her face, as the boy and girl continued to the hall-door. There Daddy Ben stood, and John's gay good-by to him was the last word that I heard the bridegroom say. While we all stood silently watching them as they drove away from the tall iron gate, the mocking-bird on the staircase broke into melodious ripples of song. XXIII POOR AUNT CAROLA! AND now here goes my language back into the small-clothes that it wore at the beginning of all, when I told you something of that colonial society, the Selected Salic Scions, dear to the heart of my Aunt. It were beyond my compass to approach this august body of men and women with the respect that is its due, did I attire myself in that modern garment which, in the phrase of the vulgar, is denoted pants. You will scarce have forgot, I must suppose, the importance set by my Aunt Carola upon the establishing of the Scions in new territories, wherever such persons as were both qualified by their descent and in themselves worthy, should be found; and you will remember that I was bidden by her to look in South Carolina for members of the Bombo connection which she was inclined to suspect existed in that state. My neglect to make this inquiry for my kind Aunt now smote me sharply when all seemed too late. John Mayrant had spoken of Kill-devil Bombo, the very personage through whom lay Aunt Carola's claim to kingly lineage, and I had let John Mayrant go away upon his honeymoon without ever questioning him upon this subject. As I looked back upon the ease with which I might have settled the matter, and forward to my return emptyhanded to the generous relative to whom I owed this agreeable experience of travel, I felt guilty indeed. I wrote a letter to follow John Mayrant into whatever retreat of bliss he had betaken himself to, and I begged him earnestly to write me at his early convenience all that he might know of Bombos in South Carolina. Consequently, I was able, on reaching home, to meet Aunt Carola with some sort of countenance, and to assure her that I expected presently to be furnished with authentic and valuable particulars. I now learned that the Selected Salic Scions had greatly increased in numbers during my short absence. It appeared that the origin of the whole movement had sprung from a needy but ingenious youth in some manufacturing town of New England. This lad had a cousin, who had amassed from nothing a noble fortune by inventing one day a speedy and convenient fashion of opening beer bottles; and this cousin's achievement had set him to looking about him. He soon discovered that in our great republic everywhere there were living hundreds and thousands of men and women who were utterly unaware that they were descended from kings. Borrowing a little money to float him, he set up The American Almanach de Gotha and began (for the minimum sum of fifty dollars a pedigree) to reveal to these eager people the chain of links that connected them with royalty. Thus, in a period of time the brevity of which is incredible, this young man passed from complete indigence to a wife and four automobiles, or an automobile and four wives - I don't remem |