Lippincotts Magazine, July 1885 | Page 4

Bijou Brown and her father," said Ethel.
"That isn't as nice a church as ours. We will take the others into Kalsing, eh, husband?" said Mabel; "that is, if they will come."
"I will go to the scaffold with Mrs. Ketchum," protested Sir Robert gallantly. "What do you youngsters say?"
"Ramsay and I thought we would walk over to that little village on the crest of a hill that one can see from my window," said Mr. Heathcote.
"You had much better go to church, --much better. But of course your soul is your own," said Sir Robert.
"You won't have much body left when you get back: it is a good twenty miles," remarked Mr. Ketchum.
"Oh, that is nothing." replied Mr. Ramsay.
"Forty miles there and back! Are they crazy?" Mrs. Ketchum asked of Mabel _sotto voce_; to which a smile and shake of the head came in answer.--"The day is very damp, Job. I am almost afraid to go out; but it is my duty, and I will."
"That's right, ma. Do your duty. It is a good earthly as well as heavenly investment," replied Mr. Ketchum.
"But I wish, son, that you would live in Kalsing, next to the church, or in New York, which would be better. I saw a beautiful house advertised in the neighborhood of Trinity Church the other day, and wrote to ask about it," said Mrs. Ketchum, who was always in spirit moving the family away from Fairfield.
"You are too speculative, ma, entirely," said he. "You are like my partner, Richardson, who would write to ask the Czar what he would take for the Winter Palace, if I'd let him, when if steamships were a dollar a dozen he couldn't put up enough to buy a gang-plank. I can't move next to a church, because all you womenites belong to different ones; but I can take a room for you in the steeple and have an elevator put in that will make close connection with the services, if you like."
"Don't be irreverent, my son," said Mrs. Ketchum, who, like some other Protestants, believed in an infallible steeple, if not an infallible Pope. "I don't expect my wishes to be considered in anything."
"Oh, come, now, ma; that isn't fair. Except that I married to suit myself, which is about the only foolish thing that I have done, I have been tolerably obedient, I think," said Mr. Ketchum, aware that he was on dangerous ground.
"Do tell us about it. You wanted him to marry some one else,--some one with a fortune, didn't you?" said Mrs. Sykes. "Quite natural, I am sure."
"She wanted me to marry the ugliest woman east of the Rockies," said Mr. Ketchum. "But I couldn't stand that face behind my cups and saucers three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and I bolted to England, where my wife picked me up."
"She wasn't so ugly at all, Job, except that her nose was a little aquiline," protested Mrs. Ketchum.
"Aquiline as a camel's back," asserted her son, in an aside.
"And her hair was rather auburn," Mrs. Ketchum went on, in reluctant concession.
"Call it pink, as the English do their hunting-coats," suggested he, smiling.
"But such a dear, good girl, you quite forgot that she wasn't exactly handsome" ("No, not precisely," interjected he) "when you came to know her."
"That I never did. It might as a speculation have done to get a cast of her face for andirons to keep the American child from falling into the fire; but _marry her_! Good Lord! When I eat anything now that disagrees with me, I dream of Emily's mouth," affirmed Mr. Ketchum, with the most laughing mirth in his eyes, his mobile features expressing volumes.
"Her mouth was large, and her teeth a little prominent. But you shall not abuse Emily any more. You would have been very happy with her, I can tell you," asserted Mrs. Ketchum. "You would have got over her mouth."
"I might in time have got around it, and I could easily have got into it, but I should never have got over it in the world," affirmed Mr. Ketchum, with decision. "I would rather be married to that Puseyite there, unhappy as I am."
This closed the little duel between the mother and son, and another laugh drowned Mabel's remark to Miss Noel, which was, "Husband is in one of his joking moods, and does not mean that he is really unhappy at all. He should not say such things, they are so very misleading."
When quiet was restored, a discussion followed about the parties in the English Church, and, the question being raised as to who was the head of the Low Church party, Mr. Ketchum had just said, "Why, _Lucifer_, of course," when, amid general merriment, Miss Brown walked in, saying, "I never heard of such an uproarious Sunday party.