Book Five The End of the Beginning Chapter 2 Cadge's Assignment

It was just at that happy moment that the office boy announced Mr. Winship to share the Judge's kind wishes; and by good luck in came also Mrs. Baker, but a moment behind him.

"Why, Ezra!" she chirped in a flutter of amazed cordiality at sight of her husband's visitor. "You in New York? Why, for Nelly's wedding, of course! John Burke, why've you kept us in the dark these months and months? I'm-- I'm really ashamed of you!"

Her plump gloved hands seized Mr. Winship's, while her small, swift, bird- like eyes looked reproach at me.

"Patience, Mrs. Baker; patience!" rejoined the Judge. "Is not an engaged man entitled to his secrets? Has it escaped your memory how, once upon a time, you and I--."

"There, now, Bake! Stop, can't you?" she interrupted with vehement good nature; and I ceased to intrude upon the three old friends.

That afternoon, when I sought Helen at the studio, I was more surprised than I should have been, and wonderfully relieved to discover the result of their conference.

Ignorant of any quarrel and overflowing with anxiety, Helen's father had unbosomed his anxieties about her health and accomplished what no diplomacy could have done. Mrs. Baker had flown with him to the studio, where, constrained by his presence, Helen had submitted to an incredible truce with her aunt.

"I told Tim'thy an' Frances we'd eat Sunday dinner with 'em," Mr. Winship told me; "an' they say you'n' Sis had ought to be married f'om their house. Good idee, seems to me, though Sis here don't take to it, somehow."