The Wall Street Girl Part 50

"May I say that at once?" he smiled. "I do not think I have always given Don as much credit for his good judgment as I feel he should have been given."

"Good old Barton!" choked Don.

"There's one thing more," said Barton--"a--a little present for myself."

He handed Don an envelope.

"Thank you, sir," said Don, thrusting it unopened in his pocket. "And now it seems to me the least the bride can do is to let you kiss her."

"I'm not a bride yet," answered Sally demurely, "but--"

She came to Barton's side and he kissed her on the cheek.

"It's too bad that Pendleton couldn't have lived to know his son's wife," he said.

A little later Don gave Sally the envelope to open. It contained a check for five hundred dollars.

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Don, "we're rolling in wealth. I guess when we get back to town we'll have to buy a car."

"When we get back to town we'll open a bank account," corrected Sally.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

A BULLY WORLD

As Sally came down the stairs at a quarter of three in her white silk wedding gown the wonder was how, after a morning of such honest hard work as she had put in, it was possible for her to look so fresh. Many a town bride, after spending the entire morning resting in preparation for such an event, has at the last moment failed to turn up with such apple-red cheeks or brilliant eyes. There was a gently serious expression about her mouth, to be sure, but that was not due to fatigue. In spite of her light-heartedness during the last few days she had been all the while keenly conscious that she was accepting a great responsibility. She was about to marry not only a lover, but a man whose future was to be in her keeping. Among other things he was to be a future partner in the firm of Carter, Rand & Seagraves, and that meant several years of very hard work ahead of them. Then there were the secret responsibilities--the unborn responsibilities. These were not very definite, to be sure, but she felt them, timidly, gravely, in queer little tuggings at her heart.

When finally she stood in front of the clergyman with Don by her side, she felt, not that she was in a bower of wild flowers, but before an altar. The ritual for her had a deeply religious significance. She made her responses in a steady voice heard by every one in the room.

When she made the promise "to love, cherish, and obey," she spoke it as though she meant it. It did not disturb her in the slightest to utter the word "obey," because she knew well that whatever commands came to her from Don would be of her own inspiring. To her this promise was no more than an agreement to obey her own best impulses.

The service seemed almost too brief for so solemn an undertaking, but when it was over, she reached for Don's hand and took it in a hearty grip that was more of a pledge than the ring itself. It sent a tingle to his heart and made his lips come together--the effect, a hundred times magnified, of the coach's slap upon the back that used to thrill him just before he trotted on the field before a big game. He felt that the harder the obstacles to be overcome for her dear sake, the better. He would like to have had a few at that moment as a relief to his pent-up emotions.

He remembered in a sort of impatient daze the congratulations that followed--with the faces of Mrs. Halliday and Barton standing out a trifle more prominently--and then the luncheon. It seemed another week before she went upstairs to change into her traveling-dress; another week before she reappeared. Then came good-byes and the shower of rice, with an old shoe or so mixed in. He had sent her trunk the day before to the mountain hotel where they were to be for a week, but they walked to the station, he carrying her suitcase. Then he found himself on the train, and in another two hours they were at the hotel.

It was like an impossible dream come true when finally they stood for the first time alone--she as his wife. He held out his arms to her and she came this time without protest.

"Heart of mine," he whispered as he kissed her lips again and again,--"heart of mine, this is a bully old world."

"You've made it that, Don."

"I? I haven't had anything to do about it except to get you."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

DON MAKES GOOD

They had not one honeymoon, but two or three. When they left the hotel and came back to town, it was another honeymoon to enter together the house in which she had played so important a part without ever having seen it. When they stepped out of the cab she insisted upon first seeing it from the outside, instead of rus.h.i.+ng up the steps as he was for doing.

"Don," she protested, "I--I don't want to have such a pleasure over with all at once. I want to get it bit by bit."

There was not much to see, to be sure, but a door and a few windows--a section similar to sections to the right and left of which it was a part. But it was a whole house, a house with lower stories and upper stories and a roof--all his, all hers. To her there was something still unreal about it.

He humored her delay, though Nora was standing impatiently at the door, anxious to see the Pendleton bride. But when she finally did enter, Nora, at the smile she received, had whatever fears might have been hers instantly allayed.

"Gawd bless ye," she beamed.

Sally refused to remove her wraps until she had made her inspection room by room, sitting down in each until she had grasped every detail.

So they went from the first floor to the top floor and came back to the room which he had set apart for their room.

"Does it suit you, wife of mine?" he asked.

With the joy of it all, her eyes filled.

"It's even more beautiful than I thought it would be," she trembled.

For him the house had changed the moment she stepped into it. With his father alive, it had been his father's home rather than his; with his father gone, it had been scarcely more than a convenient resting-place. There had been moments--when he thought of Frances here--that it had taken on more significance, but even this had been due to Sally. When he thought he was making the house ready for another, it had been her dear hand who had guided him. How vividly now he recalled that dinner at the little French restaurant when he had described his home to her--the home which was now her home too. It was at that moment she had first made her personality felt here.

Sally removed her hat and tidied her hair before the mirror in quite as matter-of-fact a fas.h.i.+on as though she had been living here ever since that day instead of only the matter of a few minutes. When she came downstairs, Nora herself seemed to accept her on that basis. To her suggestions, she replied, "Yes, Mrs. Pendleton," as glibly as though she had been saying it all her life.

They returned on a Sat.u.r.day. On Monday Don was to go back to the office. Sally had sent in her resignation the day of her marriage and had received nice letters from both Carter and Farnsworth, with a check enclosed from the former for fifty dollars and from the latter for twenty-five dollars.

"What I'll have to do," said Don, as he retired Sunday night, "is to get a larger alarm-clock. It won't do to be late any more."

"You're right," agreed Sally. "But you won't need an alarm-clock."

"Eh?"

"You wait and see."

Sally was awake at six the next morning and Don himself less than one minute after.

"Time to get up," she called.

"I'm sleepy," murmured Don.

"Then to-morrow night you'll get to bed one hour earlier. But--up with you."

"Right-o," he answered as he sprang from bed. "But there's no need of your getting up."

"I'd be ashamed of myself if I didn't."