CHAPTER VII.
ACQUIRING A STEPFATHER.
Mrs. Laurens would have been only too glad to listen to her daughter, if she had had any idea that Norman Wylde’s intentions toward Pansy were strictly honorable. But her brother’s representations had so thoroughly alarmed her that she deemed it proper to repress the girl with the utmost sternness, while at the same time her motherly heart yearned tenderly over her and she longed for the means of lightening the girl’s hard lot in life. And it was for her children’s sake more than aught else that the yet young widow began to contemplate the idea of a second marriage.
She was still a pretty and attractive woman, and for a year past she had had an admirer who had pressed his suit more than once, and would have been accepted only for the fact that her five children were, with one accord, vehemently opposed to having a stepfather.
The widow could not help feeling vexed with her dictatorial brood.
Her suitor was a groceryman with a fair business, and owned a neat brick house, well furnished, from which a wife had been carried out more than two years ago to her grave.
The widower sadly wanted a housekeeper, and it seemed to him that pretty little Mrs. Laurens was the proper one to fill the position.
The children were rather a drawback, it was true, but he had decided that Pansy could go on earning her living at the factory and Willie at the store.
Mrs. Laurens, all unconscious of her suitor’s sordid intentions, wished very much to marry Mr. Finley, and at last permitted him to overrule her objections and persuade her that her children had no right to dictate to her in regard to a second marriage. It seemed quite a coincidence that, on the very Sunday when Norman Wylde was persuading pretty Pansy to a secret marriage, her mother was listening to counsel somewhat similar from her elderly lover.
And on Monday evening, when Pansy got in, rather late, flustered and frightened lest her mother should chide her for her tardiness, she found the children sitting around, supperless and forlorn, and manifestly relieved at her entrance.
“Where is mamma?” she asked, glancing around, rather guiltily; and Alice, the eldest of the three younger children, replied:
“Mamma had on her gray cashmere dress when we got home from school, and she put on her bonnet and said she was going out a while, and that we must be good children till she got back.”
“Very well; I will get you some supper,” their sister answered, relieved to think that her own escapade would pass undetected. She bustled around with glowing cheeks and curiously bright eyes, until, in a few moments, carriage wheels were heard pausing in the street before their door, and the eager children hastened to open it, tumbling over each other in their gleeful excitement.
What was their surprise to find that it was their own mother who had come in the carriage. She was accompanied by Mr. Finley, who came with her into the house and stood by her side with a consequential air, while she said, in a half-frightened voice:
“Now, don’t get mad, children, for it won’t do any good. I was married half an hour ago to Mr. Finley.”
Sheer surprise sealed every mouth, and, taking advantage of the momentary pause, she continued:
“I did it this way to escape the fuss I knew you would all make. I am going with Mr. Finley on a wedding tour of a week, to visit his relations in North Carolina. I packed my trunk to-day, and I depend on you, Pansy, dear, to keep house for me while I’m gone. You needn’t go to work any more till I come back. Now, come and kiss me good-by, my precious children, for the carriage is waiting to take me to the train.”