when they were in such
affliction, adding that neither herself nor Mr. Tracy could think of
being present.

'Be married quietly, without any display, if you wish to please me,' she
said; and with a wave of her cobweb handkerchief she signified that the
conference was ended.

'Well, Annie, how did you and my lady hit it?' Tom asked, meeting Ann
Eliza in the hall as she came out, flushed and hot from the interview.

'We didn't hit it at all,' Ann Eliza replied, with a sound of tears in
her voice, and a gleam in her eye which Tom had never seen before. 'She
just talked as if I were dirt, and that you were only marrying me for
money. She don't like me and I don't like her, there!' and the indignant
little girl began to cry.

Tom laughed immoderately, and, passing his arm around her as they went
down the stairs, he said:

'Of course you don't like her. Who ever did like her mother-in-law? But
you are marrying me, not my mother, so don't cry, _petite_.'

Tom was making an effort to be very kind, and even lover-like to his
_fiancee_, who was easily comforted, and who, on her return to Le Bateau
told her father plainly that the party must be given up, as it would be
sadly out of place and deeply offend the Tracys. Very unwillingly
Peterkin gave it up, and sent word to that effect to Mrs.
Rossiter-Browne, who had already been apprised of the coming event and
was having a wonderful gown made for the occasion.

'I find,' he wrote, 'that it wouldn't be at all _rachelshay_ to have a
blow out whilst the family is in deep black; but when they git into
lavender, and the young folks is home from their tower, I'll have a
tearer.'

Peterkin tried two or three times to see Mrs. Tracy, but she put him off
with one excuse after another, until Tom took the matter in hand and
told her she was acting like a fool and putting on quite too many airs.
Then she appointed an interview, and, bracing herself with a tonic, went
down to the darkened, cheerless room, and by her manner so managed to
impress him with her superiority over him and his that he forgot
entirely the speech he had prepared with infinite pains, and which had
in it a good deal about family _bonds_, and family _units_, and _Aaron's
beard_, and brotherly love. This he had rehearsed many times to May
Jane, with wonderful gestures and flourishes; 'but, I'll be bumped' he
said to her on his return from the Park House, 'if I didn't forget every
blessed word, she was so high and