Middle West -- Fiction; Short stories, American; Villages -- Fiction
My, if we didn’t have to fly around. They wasn’t no time for dress
changing. Hettie was in white muslin and Amos in every-day, but it was
all right because she was Hettie and because he looked like a king in
anything. And they was so many last things to do that none of us thought
of dress anyhow. It was four o’clock by then, and folks had been
stomping in “past the bell” and marching up-stairs and laying off their
things--being as everybody knows what’s what in Friendship Village and
don’t hev to be told where to go, same as some--till, judging by the
sound, they had all got there and was clacking in the parlor, and Mis’
Fire Chief’s party had begun. And Mis’ Fire Chief herself revived enough
to offer to tie the ribbins around the sandwiches.
“My land!” I says, “we can’t do that. We can’t have black ribbin round
the wedding sandwiches.”
But Hettie, she broke in, sweet and dignified, and before her aunt could
say a word. “Yes, we can,” she says, “yes, we can. I ain’t
superstitious, same as some. Uncle’s centerpiece an’ his willow on the
tablecloth an’ his blackribbin sandwiches,” says she, “is goin’ to stay
just the way they are, weddin’ or no weddin’,” says she. “Ain’t they,
Amos?” she ask’ him.
“You bet you,” says Amos, fervent, just like he would have agreed to
anything under heaven that Hettie said. And Mis’ Merriman, she looked at
’em then, grateful and even resigned. And time Amos had gone and got
back with the license and the minister we were all ready.
They sent me in to sort of pave the way. I slips in through the hall and
stood in the door a minute wondering how I’d tell ’em. There they all
was, setting sewing and rocking and gossiping, contented as if they had
a hostess in every room. And not one of ’em suspecting. Oh, I loved ’em
one and all, and I loved the way they was all _used_ to each other, and
talking natural about crochet patterns and recipes for oatmeal cookies
and what’s good to keep hands from chapping--not one of ’em putting on
or setting their best foot forwards or trying to act their best, same as
they might with company, but just being themselves, natural and
forgetting. And I was glad, deep down in my heart, that Maria Carpenter
hadn’t come near. Not glad that she had broke her wrist, of course--but
that she hadn’t come near. And when I stepped out to tell ’em what was
going to happen, I was so glad in my throat that I couldn’t say a word
only just--
“Friends--listen to me. What do you _s’pose_ is goin’ to happen? Oh,
they can’t none of you guess. So look. Look!”
Then I threw open the dining-room door and let ’em in--Hettie and Amos,
with Doctor June. And patterns and recipes and lotions all just simmered
down into one surprised and glad and loving buzz of wonder. And then
Hettie and Amos were married, and the world begun all over again, Garden
of Eden style.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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