Mary Minds Her Business | Page 4

am fifty--"

The two sisters had been writing when this conversation started. They
were busy on a new generation of the Spencer-Spicer genealogy, and if
you have ever engaged on a task like that, you will know the
correspondence it requires. But now for a time their pens were
forgotten and they sat looking at each other over the gatelegged table
which served as desk. They were still both remarkably good-looking,
though marked with that delicacy of material and
workmanship--reminiscent of old china--which seems to indicate the
perfect type of spinster-hood. Here and there in their hair gleamed
touches of silver, and their cheeks might have reminded you of tinted
apples which had lightly been kissed with the frost.
And so they sat looking at each other, intently, almost breathlessly,
each suddenly moved by the same question and each wishing that the
other would speak.
For the second time it was Cordelia who broke the silence.
"Patty--!"
"Yes, dear?" breathed Patty, and left her lips slightly parted.
"I wonder if Josiah--is too old--to marry again! Of course," she
hurriedly added, "he is fifty-two--but it seems to me that one of the
Spicers--I think it was Captain Abner Spicer--had children until he was
sixty--although by a younger wife, of course."
They looked it up and in so doing they came across an Ezra Babcock,
father-in-law of the Third Josiah Spencer, who had had a son proudly
born to him in his sixty-fourth year.
They gazed at each other then, those two maiden sisters, like two
conspirators in their precious innocence.
"If we could find Josiah a young wife--" said the elder at last.
"Oh, Cordelia!" breathed Patty, "if, indeed, we only could!"

Which was really how it started.
As I think you will realize, it would be a story in itself to describe the
progress of that gentle intrigue--the consultations, the gradual
eliminations, the search, the abandonment of the search--(which came
immediately after learning of two elderly gentlemen with young
wives--but no children!)--the almost immediate resumption of the quest
because of Josiah's failing health--and finally then the reward of
patience, the pious nudge one Sunday morning in church, the
whispered "Look, Cordelia, that strange girl with the Pearsons--no, the
one with the red cheeks--yes, that one!"--the exchange of significant
glances, the introduction, the invitation and last, but least, the
verification of the fruitfulness of the vine.
The girl's name was Martha Berger and her home was in California.
She had come east to attend the wedding of her brother and was now
staying with the Pearsons a few weeks before returning west. Her age
was twenty-six. She had no parents, very little money, and taught
French, English and Science in the high school back home.
"Have you any brothers or sisters!" asked Miss Cordelia, with a side
glance toward Miss Patty.
"Only five brothers and five sisters," laughed Martha.
For a moment it might be said that Miss Cordelia purred.
"Any of them married?" she continued.
"All but me."
"My dear! ... You don't mean to say that they have made you an aunt
already?"
Martha paused with that inward look which generally accompanies
mental arithmetic.
"Only about seventeen times," she finally laughed again.

When their guest had gone, the two sisters fairly danced around each
other.
"Oh, Patty!" exulted Miss Cordelia, "I'm sure she's a fruitful vine!"

CHAPTER II
There is something inexorable in the purpose of a maiden lady--perhaps
because she has no minor domestic troubles to distract her; and when
you have two maiden ladies working on the same problem, and both of
them possessed of wealth and unusual intelligence--!
They started by taking Martha to North East Harbor for the balance of
the summer, and then to keep her from going west in the fall, they
engaged her to teach them French that winter at quite a fabulous salary.
They also took her to Boston and bought her some of the prettiest
dresses imaginable; and the longer they knew her, the more they liked
her; and the more they liked her, the more they tried to enlist her
sympathies in behalf of poor Josiah--and the more they tried to throw
their brother into Martha's private company.
"Look here," he said one day, when his two sisters were pushing him
too hard. "What's all this excitement about Martha? Who is she,
anyway?"
"Why, don't you know!" Cordelia sweetly asked him, and drawing a
full breath she added: "Martha--is--your--future--wife--"
If you had been there, you would have been pardoned for thinking that
the last of the Spencers had suddenly discovered that he was sitting
upon a remonstrative bee.
The two sisters smiled at him--rather nervously, it is true, but still they
kept their hands upon their brother's shoulders, as though they were two
nurses soothing a patient and saying: "There, now