Say, I didn't know there was so many people in the
whole world as they was of them emi_grants_. Preacher come along in a
wagon one day--broke, like most preachers is. We kep' him overnight,
free, and he merried us next mornin' for nothin'. Turn about's fair
play, I reckon."
I scarcely heard her querulous confidences. "Where is Colonel
Meriwether?" I asked her at last.
"Inside," she motioned with her pipe. "Him and the gal, too. But say,
who's that a-comin' down the street there in that little sawed-off
wagon?"
I looked. It was my fiancee, Grace Sheraton!
By her side was my friend, Captain Stevenson, and at the other end of
the seat was a fluttering and animated figure that could be no one else
but Kitty. So then I guessed that Stevenson and his wife had come on
during my absence and were visiting at Dixiana. No doubt they had
driven down now for the evening mail.
Could anything have lacked now to set in worse snarl my already tangled
skein of evil fortune! Out of all the thousand ways in which we several
actors in this human comedy might have gone without crossing each
other's paths, why should Fate have chosen the only one to bring us thus
together?
Kitty seemed first to spy me, and greeted me with an enthusiastic waving
of her gloves, parasol, veil and handkerchief, all held confusedly,
after her fashion, in one hand.
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