But there was no bell; the door was opened, and in came father and mother, followed by a strange young couple.
"It is wonderful!" exclaimed Kate, when at last everybody had been embraced or introduced. "A dozen times during the last week have we talked about the delight it would give us if our father and mother could be here to be entertained a little while as our guests in our own house--for you gave it to us for a month, you know. But we refrained from sending you an invitation because we did not want to cut off your holiday. And now you are here! The good fairies could not have arranged the matter better."
When all the tales had been told; when the assertion of individuality and the plans of hermit association had been described and discussed, and the young Bringhursts had told how they, too, without knowing it, had been associate hermits, devoting their time not to the discovery of their own natures, but of the nature of each other, and how perfectly satisfied they had been with the results, it was very late, and young Clyde was not allowed to go out into the darkness to find a hotel.
It was on Thursday afternoon that Mrs. Dearborn arrived at the Archibalds' house. The letter she had received had made her feel that she could not wait until the end of the congress.
"Now, mother," said Margery, when the two were alone together, "you have seen him and you have talked to him, and Uncle Hector has told you how he went to the office of Glassborough & Clyde and found he was really their nephew, and all about him and his family; and you have been told precisely why it was necessary that we should engage ourselves so abruptly on account of the violent nature of Mr. Raybold and the trouble he might cause, not only to us, but to dear Aunt Harriet and Uncle Archibald. And now we come just like two of your own children and put the whole matter entirely into your hands and leave you to decide, out of your own heart, exactly when and where we shall be married, and all about it. Then, when father comes home, you can tell him just what you have decided to do. You are our parents, and we leave it to you."
"What in the world," said Mrs. Dearborn, an hour later, when she was talking to the two married ladies of the household, "can one do with a girl like that? I do not believe dynamite would blow them apart; and if I thought it would I should not know how to manage it."