She had been bathed and had on her beautiful new linen underclothing
that mother punched full of holes and embroidered in flowers and vines,
and Shelley was brushing her hair when some one called out: "The
Princess is coming!"
I jumped for the window, and all of them, even Sally, crowded behind.
Well, talk about carriages! No one ever had seen THAT one before. It
WAS a carriage. And such horses! The funny "'orse, 'ouse" man who
made the Pryor garden was driving. He stopped at the gate, got out and
opened a door, and the Princess' father stepped down, tall and
straight, all in shiny black. He turned around and held out his hand,
bowing double, and the Princess laid her hand in his and stepped out
too. He walked with her to the gate, made another bow, kissed her
hand, and stepped back, and she came down the walk alone. He got in
the carriage, the man closed the door, and they drove away.
Sally must have arranged before that the Princess was to come early,
for she came straight upstairs. She wore a soft white silk dress with
big faded pink roses in it, and her hair was fastened at each ear with
a bunch of little pink roses. She was lovely, but she didn't "outdress
or outshine" Sally one bit, and she never even glanced at the mirror to
see how she looked; she began helping with Sally's hair, and to dress
her. When Bess Kuntz prinked so long she made every one disgusted, the
Princess said: "Oh save your trouble. No one will look at you when
there's a bride in the house."
There was a roll almost as thick as your arm of garters that all the
other girls wanted Sally to wear for them so they would get a chance to
marry that year, and Agnes Kuntz's was so large it went twice around,
and they just laughed about it. They put a blue ribbon on Sally's
stays for luck, and she borrowed Peter's sister Mary's comb to hold her
back hair. They had the most fun, and when she was all ready except
her dress they went away, and Sally stood in the middle of the room
trembling a little. Outside you could hear carriage wheels rolling,
the beat of horses' hoofs, and voices crying greetings. "There was a
sound of revelry," by day. Mother came in hurriedly. She wore her new
brown silk, with a lace collar pinned at the throat with the pin that
had a brown goldstone setting in it, and her precious ring was on her
finger. She was dainty and pretty enough to have been a bride herself.
She turned Sally around slowly, touching her hair a little and her
skirts; then she went to the closet, took out the wedding dress, put
the skirt over Sally's head, and she came up through the whiteness,
pink and glowing. She slipped her arms into the sleeves, and mother
fastened it, shook out the skirt, saw that the bead fringe hung right,
and the lace collar lay flat, then she took Sally in her arms, held her
tight and said: "God bless you, dear, and keep you always. Amen."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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