For whose sake?: A sequel to "Why did he wed her?"Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
General
For whose sake?: A sequel to "Why did he wed her?"
Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
Bigamy -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Impostors and imposture -- Fiction
Mike, with his short, dark, curly hair neatly arranged, his fresh face,
innocent of beard or mustache, and his slight figure in a dress suit
proper to the occasion, looked like a boy got up for a birthday party,
or a freshman ready for his first college exhibition.
“Come, Mike! Stop admiring yourself and hurry up. Dandy, come! It is
nine o’clock, and time to start if we are to reach the church and get
seated in time to see the wedding party come in,” said Longman.
“Eh, Lorrd! But me courage has sunk down into the bottom av me boots!
What would ail me to be pushing meself amongst gentlefolk, anyway?”
exclaimed the nervous old man.
“Because it is my own Ran and Judy’s wedding, sure, and you are invited.
And they would feel hurt by your absence,” replied Mike.
“Eh, Lorrd, I wouldn’t mind the church so much. Sure, ivirybody’s free
to go into a church. But it’s the breakfast. Sure, an’ I nivir sat down
to the table wid gentlefolks in all my life, and wouldn’t know more’n
the babe just born how to behave myself, Lorrd! and if all tales be
thrue, gentlefolks’ ways at table is that diffunt from our’n!” sighed
Dandy.
“I suppose they eat, and drink, and talk, and laugh pretty much as other
people do. Take courage, Dandy, old man. Just look at yourself in the
glass! Why, you might be a Wall Street millionaire, or a college
professor, or a United States Senator, to look at you,” laughed Longman.
“I know!” exclaimed Dandy with a self-satisfied smirk after glancing at
the mirror. “Sure, ‘fine feathers make fine birds!’ And it is not how I
look, at all, at all, but how I’m to behave, what I’m to say, and what
I’m to do. That’s what bothers me.”
“Oh, bosh! You needn’t do anything nor say anything unless you like to.
As for behaving, just watch other people and behave as they do.”
“Now, that’s a first-rate idea o’ your’n, Longman—first-rate. And I’ll
jist be guided by that. I’ll watch the gentry, and behave jist as they
do, and thin I can’t do amiss!” exclaimed Dandy, brightening up.
A very dangerous rule, with many unsuspected exceptions.
“And now put on your overcoats and draw your woolen mittens over your
white kids, and come along, you two, or we shall be late,” said Longman,
who had already put on all his outer garments and stood ready to march.
When the three men were quite ready they went downstairs together,
walked over to the Fourth Avenue cars, boarded one and rode uptown; got
out at Blank Street, and walked to the church.
There was no sign about the building to indicate a wedding for that
morning. The doors were closed, and there was not a carriage nor a human
being near the sacred building.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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