Together Author:Robert Herrick Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Meanwhile inside the great tent the commotion was at its height, most of the guests those who had escaped the fascination of the punch-bowl hav... more »ing found their way thither. Perspiring waiters rushed back and forth with salad and champagne bottles, which were seized by the men and borne off to the women waiting suitably to be fed by the men whom they had attached. Near the entrance the Colonel, with his old friends Beals and Senator Thomas, was surveying the breakfast scene, a contented smile on his kind face, as he murmured assentingly, " So so." He and the Senator had served in the same regiment during the War, Price retiring as Colonel and the Senator as Captain; while the bridegroom's father, Tyringham Lane, had been the regimental surgeon. "What a good fellow Tyringham was, and how he would have liked to be here!" the Senator was saying sentimentally, as he held out a glass to be refilled. " Poor fellow! he never got much out of his life; didn't know how to make the most of things, went out there to that Iowa prairie after the War. You say he left his widow badly off?" The Colonel nodded, and added with pride, "But John has made that right now." The Senator, who had settled in Indianapolis and practised railroad law until his clients had elevated him to the Senate, considered complacently the various dispensations of Providence towards men. He said generously: "Well, Tyringham's son has good blood, and it will tell. He will make his way. We'll see to that, eh, Beals?" and the Senator sauntered over to a livelier group dominated by Cornelia Pallanton's waving black plumes. "Oh, marriage!" Conny chaffed, "it's the easiest thing ft woman can do, isn't it? Why should one be in a hurry when it's so hard to go back?" "Matrimony," Fosdick rem...« less