Courtship -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Teddy looks longingly at the water and then at her, finally with a deep
sigh he gets out of the bath and submits to being rubbed dry by Marie.
The morning wears on and five minutes after the appointed time Lippa
calm and very lovely in her bridal attire, walks up the aisle of St
P---- leaning on her brother's arm, and there before the altar takes
James Dalrymple to be her husband, for better, for worse, till death
them do part.
Into further details there is no need to go; weddings are all alike, you
will say, except, of course, when you happen to be one of the chief
parties concerned. There was of course, the orthodox best man,
bridesmaids, and spectators, the lengthy signing of the register and
last but not least Mendelssohn's wedding march. I wonder how the world
could have got on without it!
* * * * *
'Well, I'm glad that's over, ain't you?' says Mrs Dalrymple, who is
comfortably seated in a railway carriage, her husband opposite.
'Very,' replies Jimmy, looking unutterable things at her. 'I say though,
how late you were. I thought you were never coming, and Helmdon had the
fidgets.'
'It was exactly five minutes late,' says she, 'for George looked at his
watch just before the carriage stopped, but do look at that woman, isn't
she lovely?'
The train is stopping at one of the suburban stations, and the lady who
has caught Lippa's attention is hurrying down the platform, trying to
find a seat, holding a small child by the hand.
Jimmy pokes his head out of the window. 'By Jove,' he says, 'she is
handsome. She's getting into a third class, doesn't look like it, does
she?'
'No,' says Lippa, and then they forget all about her, till on reaching
their destination, they see her again.
'Hullo,' says Dalrymple, 'there's that woman again, I wonder who she
is?' As they pass out of the station, she drops her umbrella, and Jimmy
picking it up, restores it to her.
'Thank you,' she says, raising for a moment a pair of wonderful dark
eyes to his face.
Lippa looks at her curiously, wondering what her life story is, and then
they part, going in opposite directions.
Jimmy has a small house of his own, not far from C---- and only
half-a-mile from the sea coast and quite close to 'The Garden of Sleep,'
and here it is that he brings Lippa to pass the first days of their
married life, days of almost perfect happiness. But, in course of time,
as they are going to live together for the rest of their lives they come
to the wise conclusion that an overdose of solitude to begin with,
would be tedious, to say the least of it.
'It wasn't as if we were going to stop here long,' says Lippa one day.
'When we go back to London we must set to work to be very economical,
and that will give me heaps to do; I can't bear being idle, can you?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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