Peter: A Novel of Which He is Not the HeroSmith, Francis Hopkinson
General
Peter: A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero
Smith, Francis Hopkinson
Bank tellers -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Wall Street (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction
And with the great day--a soft November day--summer had lingered on
a-purpose--came the guests: the head of the house of Breen and his
wife--not poor Corinne, of course, who poured out her heart in a letter
instead, which she entrusted to her mother to deliver; and Holker Morris
and Mrs. Morris, and the Fosters and the Granthams and Wildermings and
their wives and daughters and sons, and one stray general, who stopped
over on his way to the West, and who said when he entered, looking
so very grand and important, that he didn't care whether he had been
invited to the ceremony or not, at which Miss Felicia was delighted,
he being a major-general on the retired list, and not a poor tailor
who--no, we won't refer to that again; besides a very, VERY select
portion of the dear lady's townspeople--the house being small, as she
explained, and Miss MacFarlane's intimates and acquaintances being both
importunate and numerous.
And with the gladsome hour came the bride.
None of us will ever forget her. Not only was she a vision of rare
loveliness, but there was in her every glance and movement that
stateliness and grace that poise and sureness of herself that marks the
high-born woman the world over when she finds herself the cynosure of
all eyes.
All who saw her descend Miss Felicia's stairs held their breath in
adoration: Not a flight of steps at all, but a Jacob's ladder down which
floated a company of angels in pink and ivory--one all in white, her
lovely head crowned by a film of old lace in which nestled a single
rose.
On she came--slowly--proudly--her slippered feet touching the carpeted
steps as daintily as treads a fawn; her gown crinkling into folds of
silver about her knees, one fair hand lost in a mist of gauze, the
other holding the blossoms which Jack had pressed to his lips--until she
reached her father's side.
“Dear daddy,” I heard her whisper as she patted his sleeve with her
fingers.
Ah! but it was a proud day for MacFarlane. I saw his bronzed and
weather-beaten face flush when he caught sight of her in all her
gracious beauty; but it was when she reached his side and laid her hand
on his arm, as he told me afterward, that the choke came. She was so
like her mother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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