Mr. Heth had
received the news of the great event with profound satisfaction,
asserting unequivocally that Canning was the finest young man he had
ever seen. And yet, unlike mamma, his joy was tempered with a certain
genuine emotion at the prospect of so soon losing the apple of his eye.

"You know the old rhyme, Cally," said he, pinching her little
ear--"'Your son's your son all his life, but your daughter's your
daughter _till_ she becomes a wife.'... Don't let it be that way, my
dear. You're all the son your old father's got...."

As to mamma, her feet remained in the clouds, but her head grew
increasingly practical. She had been rather opposed to postponing the
announcement, being ever one for the bird in the hand; but she had
yielded with good grace, and within the hour was efficiently planning
the "biggest" wedding, and the costliest wedding-reception, ever given
in that town. By the second day she was giving intelligent thought to
the trousseau--every stitch should be bought in Paris, except a few of
the plainer things, in New York--and had finally decided that the
refreshments at the reception should be "by Sherry." People should
remember that reception so long as they all did live.

"All the Canning connection shall come," she cried,--"rely on me to get
them here,--and all the most fashionable and exclusive people in the
State. Every last one of them," said she, "except Mary Page."

After an interval, during which she sat with a glitter in her eye, she
added explosively:

"_I'll_ show her whether I'm probable!"

The remark, it seemed, had rankled even in the moment of supreme
victory....

Spring, too, it became, the quintessence of spring, in the young
maiden's heart. Nature but symbolized the brilliant new life
henceforward to be her own. And the more she came to discern her lover
against his background of wealth, place, and power, the more she saw how
brilliant that life was to be, the more she thrilled with the magnitude
of her own accomplishment. Of himself in their new relation, Canning
talked much in these days, and with an unaffected earnestness: of the
high nature of the career they would make together; of his own honors
and large responsibilities to come; in chief of his family, whose name
it would be their pride to uphold through the years ahead. And the
girl's heart warmed as she listened. What was all the storied dignity of
the Cannings now but so much sweet myrrh and frankincense upon her