CHAPTER XXXIX. SAYS SHE TO HER NEIGHBOR—WHAT?

"My dear," said Mrs. Dr. Gracey to her spouse, "I have a great piece of news for you about Arthur—they say that he is engaged to one of the Van Arsdel girls."

"Good," said the Doctor, pushing up his spectacles. "It's the most sensible thing I have heard of him this long while. I always knew that boy would come right if he were only let alone. How did you hear?"

"Miss Gusher told Mary Jane. She charged her not to tell; but, oh, it's all over town! There can be no doubt about it."

"Why hasn't he been here, then, like a dutiful nephew, to tell us, I should like to know?" said Dr. Gracey.

"Well, I believe they say it isn't announced yet; but there's no sort of doubt of it. There's no doubt, at any rate, that there's been a very decided intimacy, and that if they are not engaged, they ought to be; and as I know Arthur is a good fellow, I know it must be all right. Those Ritualistic young ladies are terribly shocked. Miss Gusher says that her idol is broken; that she never again shall reverence a clergyman."

"Very likely. A Mrs. St. John will be a great interruption in the way of holy confidences and confessionals, and all their trumpery; but it's the one thing needful for Arthur. A good, sensible woman for a wife will make him a capital worker. The best adviser in church work is a good wife; and the best school of the church is a Christian family. That's my doctrine, Mrs. G."

Mrs. G. blushed at the implied compliment, while the Doctor went on:

"Now, I never felt the least fear of how Arthur was coming out, and I take great credit to myself for not opposing him. I knew a young man must do a certain amount of fussing and fizzling before he settles down strong and clear; and fighting and opposing a crotchety fellow does no good. I think I have kept hold on Arthur by never rousing his combativeness and being sparing of good advice; and you see he is turning right already. A wife will put an end to all the semi-monkish trumpery that has got itself mixed up with his real self-denying labor. A woman is capital for sweeping down cobwebs in Church or State. Well, I shall call on Arthur and congratulate him forthwith."

Dr. Gracey was Arthur's maternal uncle, and he had always kept an eye upon him from boyhood, as the only son of a favorite sister.

The Doctor, himself rector of a large and thriving church, was a fair representative of that exact mixture of conservatism and progress which characterizes the great, steady middle class of the American Episcopacy. He was tolerant and fatherly both to the Ritualists, who overdo on one side, and the Low Church, who underdo on the other. He believed largely in good nature, good sense, and the expectant treatment, as best for diseases both in the churchly and medical practice.

So, when he had succeeded in converting his favorite nephew to Episcopacy, and found him in danger of using it only as a half-way house to Rome, he took good heed neither to snub him, nor to sneer at him, but to give him sympathy in all the good work he did, and, as far as possible, to shield him from that species of persecution which is sure to endear a man's errors to him, by investing them with a kind of pathos.

"The world isn't in danger from the multitudes rushing into extremes of self-sacrifice," the Doctor said, when his wife feared that Arthur was becoming an ascetic. "Keep him at work; work will bring sense and steadiness. Give him his head, and he'll pull in harness all right by and by. A colt that don't kick out of the traces a little, at first, can't have much blood in him."

It will be seen by the subject-matter of this conversation that the good seed which had been sown in the heart of Miss Gusher had sprung up and borne fruit—thirty, sixty and a hundred fold, as is the wont of the gourds of gossip,—more rapid by half in their growth than the gourd of Jonah, and not half as consolatory.

In fact, the gossip plant is like the grain of mustard seed, which, though it be the least of all seeds, becometh a great tree, and the fowls of the air lodge in its branches and chatter mightily there at all seasons.

Miss Gusher, and Miss Vapors, and Miss Rapture, and old Mrs. Eyelet, and the Misses Glibbett, so well employed their time, about the season of Christmas, that there was not a female person in the limits of their acquaintance that had not had the whole story of all that had been seen, surmised, or imagined, related as a profound secret. Notes were collected and compared. Mrs. Eyelet remembered that she had twice seen Mr. St. John attending Angie to her door about nightfall. Miss Sykes, visiting one afternoon in the same district, deposed and said that she had met them coming out of a door together. She was quite sure that they must have met by appointment. Then, oh, the depths of possibility that the gossips saw in that Henderson house! Always there, every Thursday evening! On intimate terms with the family.

"Depend upon it, my dear," said Mrs. Eyelet, "Mrs. Henderson has been doing all she could to catch him. They say he's at her house almost constantly."

Aunt Maria's plumage rustled with maternal solicitude. "I don't know but it is as good a thing as we could expect for Angie," said she to Mrs. Van Arsdel. "He's a young man of good family and independent property. I don't like his ritualistic notions, to be sure; but one can't have everything. And, at any rate, he can't become a Roman Catholic if he gets married—that's one comfort."

"There he goes!" said little Mrs. Betsey, as she sat looking through the blinds, with the forgiven Jack on her knee. "He's at the door now. Dorcas, I do believe there's something in it."

"Something in what?" said Miss Dorcas, "and who are you talking about, Betsey?"

"Why, Mr. St. John and Angie. He's standing at the door, this very minute. It must be true. I'm glad of it; only he isn't half good enough for her."

"Well, it don't follow that there is an engagement because Mr. St. John is at the door," said Miss Dorcas.

"But all the things Mrs. Eyelet said, Dorcas!"

"Mrs. Eyelet is a gossip," said Miss Dorcas, shortly.

"But, Dorcas, I really thought his manner to her last Thursday was particular. Oh, I'm sure there's something in it! They say he's such a good young man, and independently rich. I wonder if they'll take a house up in this neighborhood? It would be so nice to have Angie within calling distance! A great favorite of mine is Angie."