"Oh, Auntie, aren"t you low?" Barbara said tranquilly, going to take an arm of her chair. "All sorts of people elope--there"s nothing so disgraceful in _that_."
"It"s disgraceful considering what a father you"ve got, and what a mother!" Miss Toland said vexatiously. "And Ted worrying your father to death about that scamp, too! I declare it"s too much!"
"He"s a pretty rich scamp, and a pretty attractive scamp," Barbara said in defence of Theodora"s choice. "He"s not like that _kid_ of a Keith!"
Julia heard the garden gate slam, and a quick, springing step on the porch before the others did, but it was Jane who said, "Here"s Jim!" and Barbara who went to let him in.
"Oh, Jimmy, have you heard of Sally?" she faltered, and as they came in from the hall Julia"s quick eye saw that she was half clinging to his shoulder, sister fashion, and that his arm was half about her.
"h.e.l.lo, every one!" said his big, rea.s.suring voice. "How"s Mother?
h.e.l.lo, Aunt Sanna--and Miss Page, too! Well, this is fun, isn"t it? Yes, Miss Babbie, I"ve heard of Sally, Sally Borroughs, as she is now--"
"What! Married?" said every one at once, and Mrs. Toland, making an impressive entrance with Richie, sank into a deep chair and echoed: "Married?"
"Married, Mother dear," said Jim. "They found me in Dad"s office at five o"clock; Keith"s father, a fierce sort of man, was with them, and was for calling the whole thing off. Sally was crying, poor girl, and Keith miserable--"
"Oh, poor old Sally!" said Barbara"s tender voice.
"You should have brought her straight home to me!" Mrs. Toland added severely.
"Well, so I thought at first. But they had their license, which would be in the morning papers anyway, and Sally had done the fool thing of mailing letters to two girl friends when she left here this morning--"
"She left me a mere scribble, pinned to her pin-cushion," said her mother, magnificently. "Just as any common actress--"
"Oh, Mother! it wasn"t pinned to her cushion at all!" Barbara protested.
"She had no pincushion, she has a pin tray."
"I hardly see how it matters, Babbie; it was on her bureau, anyway! Just like a servant girl!" Mrs. Toland persisted.
"Well, anyway, it seemed best to push it right through," said Jim, "especially as they persisted that they would do it again or die--or rather, Sally did!"
"Oh, Jim, _don"t_!" wailed Sally"s mother. "Poor, deluded child!"
"I don"t mean that Keith wasn"t fiery enough," Jim hastened to say.
"He"s a decent enough little fellow, and he"s madly in love. So we all went up to the French church, and Father Marchand married them--"
"A child of mine!" said Mrs. Toland, stricken.
"Keith"s father and I witnessed," pursued Jim, "and we both kissed the bride--"
"Sally! And she was such a dear sweet baby!" whispered Mrs. Toland, big tears beginning to run down her cheeks.
"Ah, Mother!" Constance said soothingly, at her mother"s knees.
"Sally"s of age, of course," Jim argued soothingly, "and one couldn"t bring her home like a child. The thing would have gotten out, and she"d have been a marked girl for life! There"s really no _reason_ why they shouldn"t marry, and the boy--Keith, that is, put her into a carriage quite charmingly, and they drove off. They"ll go no farther than Tamalpais or the Hotel Rafael, probably, for Keith has to be back at work on Monday, and I made him promise to bring Sally here on Sunday night."
"And what will they live on?" Mrs. Toland asked stonily.
"That isn"t worrying them. Sally has--what? From those bonds of her grandfather"s?"
"Three hundred a year," Mrs. Toland said discouragingly.
"And Keith gets fifty-five a month. That"s eighty--h"m!" pursued Jim.
"Well, some of us simply will have to help them," suggested Mrs. Toland, with a swift, innocent glance at Miss Sanna.
"His father will have to help," Miss Toland countered firmly.
They presently adjourned to the dining-room, all still talking--even Julia--of Sally. Sally would have to take the Barnes cottage, at fifteen dollars a month, and do her own cooking, and her own sewing--
"They can dine here on Sundays," said Sally"s mother, sniffing and wiping her eyes.
"And wouldn"t it be awful if they had a baby!" Jane flung out casually.
Every one felt the indelicacy of this, except Julia, who relieved all Jane"s hearers by saying warmly:
"Oh, don"t say awful! Why, you"d all go wild over a dear little baby!"
Doctor Studdiford gave her a curious look at this, and though Julia did not see it, Barbara did. After dinner the doctor and Barbara played whist with the older ladies, and Julia sat looking over their shoulders for a few minutes, and then went upstairs with Constance and Jane for a long, delightful gossip. The girls must show her various pictures of Keith and Sally, books full of kodak prints, and everywhere Julia saw Jim, too: Jim from the days of little boyhood on to to-day, Jim as camp cook, Jim as tennis champion, Jim riding, yachting, fishing; a younger Jim, in the East at college, a small, stocky, unrecognizable Jim, in short trousers and straw hat. And everywhere, with him, Barbara.
"That"s when they gave a play--I was only five," Constance said. "See, this is Jim as Jack Horner, and Babbie as Mother Goose. And look! here"s Jim on a pony--that"s at his grandfather"s place in Honolulu, He stayed there a month every year, when he was a little boy, and Mother and Barbara visited there once. Here we all are, swimming, at Tahoe. And here"s Bab in the dress she wore at her coming-out tea--isn"t it dear?
And look! here she is in an old dress of Jim"s mother, and see the old pearls; aren"t they lovely? Jim gave them to her when she was twenty."
"Jim was crazy about her then," said Jane.
"_I_ don"t think he was," Constance said perversely.
"Oh, Con, you know he was!" Jane protested. "He _was_, too," she added, to Julia.
"_I_ don"t think he was," persisted Constance lightly.
Barbara came in a second later, and again the talk went back to Sally.
"Mother and Aunt Sanna said good-night," reported Barbara, "and Aunt Sanna said to leave the door between your rooms open, and--oh, yes, Doctor Studdiford has been teasing Aunt Sanna to stay for a few days, Miss Page; he says you look as pale as a little ghost!"
"I liked so much to have you call me Julia," was Julia"s extremely tactful answer to this. Barbara, perhaps glad to find her message so casually dismissed, smiled her prettiest.
"Julia--then!" and Barbara sat down on a bed, and began to roll up her belt. "Aunt Sanna says she gives Sally and Keith about three months--"
she began.
Two days later, on Sunday, the bride and groom came home. Sally, who looked particularly well and was quite unashamed, rushed into her mother"s arms, and laughed and cried like a creature possessed. She kissed all her sisters, and if there was a note of disapproval in her welcome, she did not get it. Richie having charitably carried off the somewhat sullen young husband, the bride was presently free to open her heart to the women of the house.
"It"s all so different when you"re married, isn"t it, Mother?" bubbled Sally. "Going into hotels and everything--you don"t care who looks at you, you know you"ve a perfect right to go anywhere with your husband!
Now, that look that Keith just gave me, as he went off with Richie--_blazing_! Well, it would just have amused me when we were engaged, but now I know that he"s simply wretched with jealousy, and I"ll have to pet him a little and quiet him down! He is a perfect child about money; he _will_ spend too much on everything, and if we go abroad I"ll simply have to--"
"Go abroad?" every one echoed.
"Oh, I think we must, for Keith"s music," Sally said gravely. "He can"t settle down here, you know. He"s got to live abroad, and he"s got to have lessons--expensive lessons. Office work makes him too nervous, anyway."