Stevey Todd said, “It might be as you say, Miss,” and Uncle Abimelech, “It's better when it's hot,” looking into his teacup as if disappointed, but Captain Tom said nothing.
“It was snowing and drifting,” she went on, “and we kept falling into ditches, but at last we saw the light of the hotel by the roadside and were glad.”
So Billy Corliss had come and bounced at the door, and said he wanted a minister, and quite right he was with respect to those circumstances and Madge McCulloch, as Stevey Todd hinted, though cautiously.
When Pemberton and Corliss came back with the minister, it was clear that Pemberton agreed with Stevey Todd on that point. It may be he was not in the habit of agreeing with Andrew McCulloch. Certainly he gave Madge McCulloch away in marriage to Billy Corliss. And she, saying that she wanted a maid-of-honour, chose Uncle Abimelech for that purpose, which seemed scarcely reasonable, but the minister married them and went his way. Then Stevey Todd could not get over thinking he would have been a better maid-of-honour than Uncle Abimelech, more suitable and more according to the talents of each, and he said this, though indirectly and warily; and Uncle Abimelech said that he recollected licking Stevey Todd thirty years back on the _Hebe Maitland_, “took him across his knee and whaled him good;” and Stevey Todd, though cautiously, seemed to hint that some one who might be Abe Dalrimple, couldn't do it again, and in other respects resembled a dry codfish. Billy Corliss stood up and said:
“Gentlemen, the elements are raging. In the town of Adrian the ear of imagination detects explosions. But Pemberton's is dedicated to peace and connubiality.”
Then they retired with their connubiality, and paid us no more attention, and Pemberton, Captain Buckingham, Stevey Todd, Uncle Abimelech, and I sat by the fire.
Uncle Abimelech seemed to have something on his mind that he would like to get off, for his eyes wandered uneasily, and he muttered:
“Throwed 'em, did she?” said Pemberton to encourage him, and Uncle Abimelech said:
“Some,” and cast his eyes and jerked his thumb vaguely upward, toward the ceiling.
“If she throws 'em at him--Aye--” He struggled with the thought, bringing it slowly out of dim recesses to the light. “She ought to pour the bilin' off first. It ain't right.”