"Joyce asked her if it didn't make her feel queer to know that her
wedding-day was coming closer and closer, and quoted that line from 'The
Siege of Lucknow,'--'_Day by day the Bengal tiger nearer drew and
closer crept_.' She said she'd have a fit if she knew her wedding-day
was creeping up on her that way. Eugenia was horrified to have her talk
that way, and said that it was because she didn't know Stuart, and
didn't know what it meant to care enough for a man to be glad to join
her life to his, forever and ever. There was such a light in her eyes as
she talked about him, that we didn't say anything more for awhile, just
wondered how it must feel to be so supremely happy as she is. There is
no doubt about it, he is certainly the one written for her in the stars,
for he measures up to every ideal of hers, as faultlessly 'as the
falcon's feathers fit the falcon.'
"We had heard so much from her and Phil about Doctor Miles Bradford,
Stuart's friend who is coming with him to be one of the ushers, that we
dreaded meeting him. When she told us that he is from Boston and belongs
to one of its most exclusive families, and is very conventional, and
twenty-five years old, Joyce nicknamed him 'The Pilgrim Father,' and
vowed she wouldn't have him for her attendant; that I had to take him
and let her walk in with Rob. She said she'd shock him with her wild
west slang and uncivilized ways, and that I was the literary lady of
the establishment, and would know how to entertain such a personage.
"I was just as much afraid of him as she was, and wanted Rob myself, so
we squabbled over it all the way up and down the avenue. We were walking
five abreast, swinging hands. When we got to the gate we saw some one
coming up the road, and we all stood in a row, peeping out between the
bars till we saw that it was Rob himself. Then Joyce said that we would
make him decide the matter--that we'd all put our hands through the bars
as if we had something in them, and make him choose which he'd take,
right or left. If he said right, I could have him for my attendant and
she'd take Doctor Bradford, but if he said left I'd have to put up with
the Pilgrim Father, and she'd take Rob.
[Illustration: "'ALL YOU GIRLS STANDING WITH YOUR HANDS STUCK THROUGH
THE BARS'"]
"He came along bareheaded, swinging his hat in his hand, and we were so
busy explaining to him that he was to choose which hand he'd take, right
or left, that we did not notice that he had a kodak hidden behind his
hat. He held it up in front of him, and bowed and scraped and did all
sorts of ridiculous things to keep us from noticing what he was doing,
till all of a sudden we heard the shutter click and he gave a whoop and
said, 'There! That will be one of the best pictures in my collection.
All you girls standing with your hands stuck through the bars, like
monkeys at the Zoo, begging for peanuts. I don't know whether to call it
"Behind the Bars," or "Don't Feed the Animals."'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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