United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
It had been no part of Margaret's plan to acknowledge the marriage so
soon. Though on pleasure bent, she had a frugal mind. She had invested
in a husband with a view of laying him away for a rainy day--that is to
say, for such time as her master and mistress should cease to need her
services; for she had promised on more than one occasion to remain with
the old people as long as they lived. Indeed, if Mr. O'Rourke had come
to her and said in so many words, “The day you marry me you must leave
the Bilkins family,” there is very little doubt but Margaret would
have let that young sea-monster slip back unmated, so far as she was
concerned, into his native element. The contingency never entered into
her calculations. She intended that the ship which had brought Ulysses
to her island should take him off again after a decent interval of
honeymoon; then she would confess all to Mrs. Bilkins, and be forgiven,
and Mr. Bilkins would not cancel that clause supposed to exist in his
will bequeathing two first-mortgage bonds of the Squedunk E. B. Co. to a
certain faithful servant. In the mean while she would add each month to
her store in the coffers of the Rivermouth Savings Bank; for Calypso had
a neat sum to her credit on the books of that provident institution.
But this could not be now. The volatile bridegroom had upset the
wisely conceived plan, and “all the fat was in the fire,” as Margaret
philosophically put it. Mr. O'Rourke had been fully instructed in the
part he was to play, and, to do him justice, had honestly intended to
play it; but destiny was against him. It may be observed that destiny
and Mr. O'Rourke were not on very friendly terms.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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