“Pa, dear!” cried Bella, beckoning him with her parasol to approach the side, and bending gracefully to whisper.
“Yes, my darling.”
“Did I beat you much with that horrid little bonnet, Pa?”
“Nothing to speak of; my dear.”
“Did I pinch your legs, Pa?”
“Only nicely, my pet.”
“You are sure you quite forgive me, Pa? Please, Pa, please, forgive me quite!” Half laughing at him and half crying to him, Bella besought him in the prettiest manner; in a manner so engaging and so playful and so natural, that her cherubic parent made a coaxing face as if she had never grown up, and said, “What a silly little Mouse it is!”
“But you do forgive me that, and everything else; don’t you, Pa?”
“Yes, my dearest.”
“And you don’t feel solitary or neglected, going away by yourself; do you, Pa?”
“Lord bless you! No, my Life!”
“Goodbye, dearest Pa. Goodbye!”
“Goodbye, my darling! Take her away, my dear John. Take her home!”
So, she leaning on her husband’s arm, they turned homeward by a rosy path which the gracious sun struck out for them in its setting. And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death. And O what a bright old song it is, that O ’tis love, ’tis love, ’tis love that makes the world go round!
V
Concerning the Mendicant’s Bride
The impressive gloom with which Mrs. Wilfer received her husband on his return from the wedding, knocked so hard at the door of the cherubic conscience, and likewise so impaired the firmness of the cherubic legs, that the culprit’s tottering condition of mind and body might have roused suspicion in less occupied persons that the grimly heroic lady, Miss Lavinia, and that esteemed friend of the family, Mr. George Sampson. But, the attention of all three being fully possessed by the main fact of the marriage, they had happily none to bestow on the guilty conspirator; to which fortunate circumstance he owed the escape for which he was in nowise indebted to himself.
“You do not, R. W.” said Mrs. Wilfer from her stately corner, “inquire for your daughter Bella.”
“To be sure, my dear,” he returned, with a most flagrant assumption of unconsciousness, “I did omit it. How—or perhaps I should rather say where—is Bella?”
“Not here,” Mrs. Wilfer proclaimed, with folded arms.
The cherub faintly muttered something to the abortive effect of “Oh, indeed, my dear!”
“Not here,” repeated Mrs. Wilfer, in a stern sonorous voice. “In a word, R. W., you have no daughter Bella.”
“No daughter Bella, my dear?”
“No. Your daughter Bella,” said Mrs. Wilfer, with a lofty air of never having had the least copartnership in that young lady: of whom she now made reproachful mention as an article of luxury which her husband had set up entirely on his own account, and in direct opposition to her advice: “—your daughter Bella has bestowed herself upon a Mendicant.”
“Good gracious, my dear!”
“Show your father his daughter Bella’s letter, Lavinia,” said Mrs. Wilfer, in her monotonous Act of Parliament tone, and waving her hand. “I think your father will admit it to be documentary proof of what I tell him. I believe your father is acquainted with his daughter Bella’s writing. But I do not know. He may tell you he is not. Nothing will surprise me.”
“Posted at Greenwich, and dated this morning,” said the Irrepressible, flouncing at her father in handing him the evidence. “Hopes Ma won’t be angry, but is happily married to Mr. John Rokesmith, and didn’t mention it beforehand to avoid words, and please tell darling you, and love to me, and I should like to know what you’d have said if any other unmarried member of the family had done it!”
He read the letter, and faintly exclaimed “Dear me!”
“You may well say Dear me!” rejoined Mrs. Wilfer, in a deep tone. Upon which encouragement he said it again, though scarcely with the success he had expected; for the scornful lady then remarked, with extreme bitterness: “You said that before.”
“It’s very surprising. But I suppose, my dear,” hinted the cherub, as he folded the letter after a disconcerting silence, “that we must make the best of it? Would you object to my pointing out, my dear, that Mr. John Rokesmith is not (so far as I am acquainted with him), strictly speaking, a Mendicant.”
“Indeed?” returned Mrs. Wilfer, with an awful air of politeness. “Truly so? I was not aware that Mr. John Rokesmith was a gentleman of landed property. But I am much relieved to hear it.”
“I doubt if you have heard it, my dear,” the cherub submitted with hesitation.
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Wilfer. “I make false statements, it appears? So be it. If my daughter flies in my face, surely my husband may. The one thing is not more unnatural than the other. There seems a fitness in the arrangement. By all means!” Assuming, with a shiver of resignation, a deadly cheerfulness.
But, here the Irrepressible skirmished into the conflict, dragging the reluctant form of Mr. Sampson after her.
“Ma,” interposed the young lady, “I must say I think it would be much better if you would keep to the point, and not hold forth about people’s flying into people’s faces, which is nothing more nor less than impossible nonsense.”
“How!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilfer, knitting her dark brows.
“Just im‑possible nonsense, Ma,” returned Lavvy, “and George Sampson knows it is, as well as I do.”
Mrs. Wilfer suddenly becoming petrified, fixed her indignant eyes upon the wretched George: who, divided between the support due from him to his love, and the support due from him to his love’s mamma, supported nobody, not even himself.
“The true point is,” pursued Lavinia, “that Bella has behaved in a most unsisterly way to me, and might have severely compromised me with George and with George’s family, by making off and getting married in
