"
Cephas was content, too. There was a good deal in being settled
and having "the whole doggoned business" off your hands. Phoebe
looked a very different creature to him in these latter days. Her
eyes were just as pale, of course, but they were brighter, and
they radiated love for him, an expression in the female eye that
he had thus far been singularly unfortunate in securing. She
still held her mouth slightly open, but Cephas thought that it
might be permissible, perhaps after three months of wedded bliss,
to request her to be more careful in closing it. He believed,
too, that she would make an effort to do so just to please him;
whereas a man's life or property would not be safe for a single
instant if he asked Miss Patience Baxter to close her mouth, not
if he had been married to her for thirty times three months!
Cephas did not think of Patty any longer with bitterness, in
these days, being of the opinion that she was punished enough in
observing his own growing popularity and prosperity.
"If she should see that mahogany chamber set going into the ell I
guess she'd be glad enough to change her tune!" thought Cephas,
exultingly; and then there suddenly shot through his mind the
passing fancy--"I wonder if she would!" He promptly banished the
infamous suggestion however, reinforcing his virtue with the
reflection that the chamber set was Phoebe's, anyway, and the
marriage day appointed, and the invitations given out, and the
wedding-cake being baked, a loaf at a time, by his mother and
Mrs.
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