"Now, about you girls," said Billy. "Sue feels that you might make a good thing of it if you stayed on here. What do you think?"
"Well, Billy--well, Ferd---" Everyone turned to look at Mary Lou, who was stammering and blushing in a most peculiar way. Mr. Eastman put his arm about her. Part of the truth flashed on Susan.
"You're going to be married!" she gasped. But this was the moment for which Ferd had been waiting, "We are married, good people," he said buoyantly. "This young lady and I gave you all the slip two weeks ago!"
Susan rushed to kiss the bride, but upon Virginia's bursting into hysterical tears, and Georgie turning faint, Mary Lou very sensibly set about restoring her sisters' composure, and, even on this occasion, took a secondary part.
"Perhaps you had some reason---" said Georgie, faintly, turning reproachful eyes upon the newly wedded pair.
"But, with poor Ma just gone!" Virginia burst into tears again.
"Ma knew," sobbed Mary Lou, quite overcome. "Ferd--Ferd---" she began with difficulty, "didn't want to wait, and I WOULDN'T,--so soon after poor Grace!" Grace had been the first wife. "And so, just before Ma's birthday, he took us to lunch--we went to Swains---"
"I remember the day!" said Virginia, in solemn affirmation.
"And we were quietly married afterward," said Ferd, himself, soothingly, his arm about his wife, "and Mary Lou's dear mother was very happy about it. Don't cry, dear---"
Susan had disliked the man once, but she could find no fault with his tender solicitude for the long-neglected Mary Lou. And when the first crying and exclaiming were over, there was a very practical satisfaction in the thought of Mary Lou as a prosperous man's wife, and Virginia provided for, for a time at least. Susan seemed to feel fetters slipping away from her at every second.
Mr. Eastman took them all to lunch, at a modest table d'hote in the neighborhood, tipped the waiter munificently, asked in an aside for a special wine, which was of course not forthcoming. Susan enjoyed the affair with a little of her old spirit, and kept them all talking and friendly. Georgie, perhaps a little dashed by Mary Lou's recently acquired state, told Susan in a significant aside, as a doctor's wife, that it was very improbable that Mary Lou, at her age, would have children; "seems such a pity!" said Georgie, shrugging. Virginia, to her new brother-in-law's cheerful promise to find her a good husband within the year, responded, with a little resentful dignity, "It seems a little soon, to me, to be JOKING, Ferd!"