Don Mariano wished to celebrate that double wedding in the same old-fashioned way in which his own had been solemnized. He wanted at least three days of good eating and drinking, and dancing; to have noise and boat racing; to have a day's sailing on the bay, and a day's picnic in the woods, to which picnic even the stubborn, hostile squatters should be invited. But with the sole exception of Victoriano, no one of his family approved this programme.
"I'm afraid my dear husband that we are too closely surrounded by Americans for us to indulge in our old-fashioned rejoicings," Doña Josefa said.
"Who cares for that?" Victoriano asked, scornfully.
"I don't believe that the right thinking and kind-hearted Americans would say anything, except that such is customary among us. But if George and Gabriel desire to run off in the steamer, as though they were ashamed of matrimony, I say let them have their way. But they will have a wedding that will look like a funeral," said the disappointed Don Mariano.
"George and Gabriel are willing to have their wedding celebrated as you propose, but it is the girls that object; they wished to run off and hide for a month in a fashionable hotel in San Francisco; afterward they came to the conclusion that they didn't want to go to a hotel, so Gabriel proposed that they will take the steamer that goes to Mazatlan and Guaymas and La Paz, thus to visit all of those places on their wedding tour," Victoriano said. "As George had been wishing to see the Mexican coast, this plan suited all very well, and George has written to have the steamer stop for them on her way south," Victoriano explained, half apologetically, half resentfully.
"That is all right; if they are satisfied I am," said Don Mariano, philosophically, with characteristic amiability.
The steamer running between San Francisco and the Mexican ports on the Gulf of California stopped at San Diego to take the newly married couples; a large party of friends escorted them on board.
Don Mariano was kind and affable to all, but many days passed before he became reconciled to the fact that the marriage of his two children was not celebrated as his own had been, in the good old times of yore.
The brides and grooms had been gone for some time, and might now be coming back in a few days.