Aunts -- Fiction; Children -- Fiction; Sisters-in-law -- Fiction
Betty and Hugh were among the bridesmaids and pages, and Hugh shocked
Betty very much by saying, in the middle of the service "When may I play
with my girl?"
Some one described Uncle Jim as looking like one of the Apostles, and
Aunt Cecilia certainly looked like a saint. Ought I, by the way, to
bracket an apostle and a saint? But nothing was so wonderful or so
beautiful as the expression on Pauline's face. I am sure that, as she
walked up the aisle, she was oblivious to everything and every one
except God and Dick.
It is assuredly a great responsibility for a man to accept such a love
as hers.
A wedding is nearly always a choky thing, and Pauline's was particularly
so. As she left the church, she stopped in the churchyard to speak to
her friends, and for one old woman she waited to let her feel her dress.
"Is it my jewels you want to feel, Anne?" she said, as the old hands
tremblingly passed over her bodice. "I have on no jewels."
The old hands went up to Pauline's face and gently and reverently
touched it. "God bless her happy face," said the old woman. "I had to
know for sure." Pauline kissed the old fingers gently. We all knew for
sure, but then we had eyes to see.
Pauline went away in the afternoon, and the villagers danced far into
the evening, and there was revelry in the park by night.
After Pauline and Dick had gone away, I walked across the park to
the post office to send a telegram to Julia, who was kept at home by
illness, to her very great disappointment. There is nothing she adores
like a wedding. I was glad to escape for a few minutes. I wrote out the
telegram and handed it to the postmaster, who, reading it, said, I'm
glad it went off so well. "There's nobody what wouldn't wish her well."
Then he counted the words. "Julia Westby?" he said. "Um-um-um-um.
Eleven, miss. You might as well give her the title." I laughed and
added, or rather he added, the "Lady."
Julia is not a sister-in-law really, but she likes to call herself so,
since she might have been one, having been for one ecstatic week in
Archie's life engaged to him. She is wont now to lay her hand on his
head, in public, for choice, and say, "He was almost mine." She says
she still loves him as a friend. "But, you see, dearest Betty, there is
everything that is delightful in the relationship of a poor friend, but
a poor husband! That is another thing. To begin with, it is not fair
to a man that he should have to deny his wife things. It is bad for his
character and, of course, for hers. He becomes a saint at her expense,
whereas the expense should always be borne by the husband. William is so
delightfully rich, but he is not an Archie, of course! But then husbands
are not supposed to be."
Hugh, going to bed, wondered if the angels would bring Pauline a baby
that night, a darling little baby!
And Betty said, in her great wisdom, "Oh, darling, I think it would be
too exciting for Pauline to be married and have a baby all on one day."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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