And So They Were Married

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CHAPTER I


Dr. North's wife, attired in her dressing-gown and slippers, noiselessly
tilted the shutter of the old-fashioned inside blind and peered
cautiously out. The moon was shining splendidly in the dark sky, and the
empty street seemed almost as light as day. It had been snowing earlier
in the evening, Mrs. North observed absent-mindedly, and the clinging
drifts weighed the dark evergreens on either side of the gate almost to
the ground. A dog barked noisily from his kennel in a neighbouring yard,
and a chorus of answering barks acknowledged the signal; some one was
coming along the moonlit street. There were two figures, as Mrs. North
had expected; she craned her plump neck anxiously forward as the gate
clicked and a light girlish laugh floated up on the frosty air.

"Dear, dear!" she murmured, "I do hope Bessie will come right into the
house. It is too cold to stand outside talking."

Apparently the young persons below did not think so. They stood in the
bright moonlight in full view of the anxious watcher behind the shutter,
the man's tall figure bent eagerly toward the girl, whose delicate
profile Mrs. North could see distinctly under the coquettish sweep of
the broad hat-brim.

"The child ought to have worn her high overshoes," she was thinking,
when she was startled by the vision of the tall, broad figure stooping
over the short, slight one.

Then the key clicked in the lock and the front door opened softly; the
sound was echoed by the closing gate, as the tall figure tramped briskly
away over the creaking snow. The neighbour's dog barked again,
perfunctorily this time, as if acknowledging the entire respectability
of the passer-by; all the other dogs in town responded in kind, and
again