"Oh, that reminds me!" began Lloyd, then stopped abruptly. Nobody
noticed the exclamation, however, but Mary, and, with swift intuition,
she guessed what the something blue had suggested to the maid of honor.
It was that bit of turquoise that caused the only scramble in the
preparations, for Lloyd could not remember where she had put it.
"I was suah I dropped it into one of the boxes in my top bureau drawer,"
she said to herself on the way up-stairs. Then, with her finger on her
lip, she stopped on the threshold of the sewing-room to consider. She
remembered that when she gave up her room to the guests, all the boxes
had been taken out of that drawer. Some of them had been put in the
sewing-room closet, and some carried to a room at the end of the back
hall, where trunks and hampers were stored.
Now, while Betty was down-stairs, helping with a few last details, Lloyd
took advantage of her absence to search all the boxes in the closet and
drawers of the sewing-room, but the missing turquoise was not in any of
them.
"I know I ought to be taking a beauty sleep," she thought, "so I'll be
all fresh and fine for the evening, but I must find it, for I promised
Phil I'd wear it."
In the general shifting of furniture to accommodate so many guests,
several articles had found their way back among the trunks. Among them
was an old rocking-chair. It was drawn up to the window now, and, as
Lloyd pushed open the door, to her surprise she found Mary Ware
half-hidden in its roomy depths. She was tilted back in it with a book
in her hands.
Mary was as surprised as Lloyd. She had been so absorbed in the story
that she did not hear the knob turn, and as the hinges suddenly creaked,
she started half out of her chair.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, settling back when she saw it was only Lloyd. "You
frightened me nearly out of my wits. I didn't know that anybody ever
came in here." Then she seemed to feel that some explanation of her
presence was necessary.
"I came in here because our room is full of clothes, spread out ready to
wear. They're all over the room,--mine on one side and Joyce's on the
other. I was so afraid I'd forget and flop down on them, or misplace
something, that I came in here to read awhile. It makes the afternoon go
faster. Seems to me it never will be time to dress."
Lloyd stood looking at the shelves around the room, then said: "If time
hangs so heavy on yoah hands, I believe I'll ask you to help me hunt for
something I have lost. It's just a trifle, and maybe it is foolish for
me to try to find it now, when everything is in such confusion, but it
is something that I want especially."
"I'd love to help hunt," exclaimed Mary, putting down her book and
holding out her arms to take the boxes which Lloyd was reaching down
from the shelves. One by one she piled them on a packing-trunk behind
her, and then climbed up beside them, sitting Turk fashion in their
midst, and leaving the chair by the window for Lloyd.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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