Part 24 (1/2)
The girl lifted her eyes and swallowed a sob. ”n.o.bud-d-dy can,” she wailed; ”I'm going to be m-m-married!”
Alice's face twitched. ”Won't you tell me about it?” she asked.
”Cheering folks up” was proving an intricate business. ”If the garment of praise doesn't fit any one,” she thought, ”I'll just have to carry it back and wear it myself.”
The bride gulped and spoke again:
”It's to be to-night and I've missed my train at the Junction already, and I don't know what to do. Everybody was invited and the supper won't keep, and I lost my solid silver hatpin, anyway.”
”Can't you come out and walk with me?” suggested Alice. ”The air will make you feel better. Bathe your eyes and come.”
Still tearful, but manifestly a little relieved, the bride obeyed and, once out on the prairie, poured forth her tale. She had at the last moment decided she could not bear to be married without a veil, and had gone early in the morning to the nearest town to invest her last money in that frivolity. Fate was against her, however, for there were no veils in the shops, and a persuasive milliner had induced her to give up her cherished notion and buy a hat instead. ”And I'm most sure the ribbon's cotton-back,” she sighed. ”I don't know why I bought it, anyway. That's always the way with me. I think I know what I'll get, and then they coax me into getting something different. Once I went down town to buy me a pair of black stockings, and I got an Alice blue silk waist, instead. Stephen he thinks it's funny and he says he'll see to the shopping when we're married. I wisht he'd come to-day.”
”Wouldn't it be fun if he had?” said Alice. ”There is a minister on the train, and we could have had a lovely wedding out here!”
This romantic idea cheered them both for a time, but its power was brief. There were signs of a tear-shower imminent, and Alice was at her wits' end for devices to adjust that garment of praise to fit.
Then came a great inspiration. ”Let's walk to the Junction,” she exclaimed. ”I'll go with you, and you can get a team there, and drive home.”
”But you'd miss your train.”
”O, no, I wouldn't. It has to come right along there behind us, and I could jump on the cow-catcher if it came; but it can't come without an engine, and there isn't one in sight, and it's only two miles to your Junction, you say. That won't be anything of a walk. Go and get your hat-box.”
The hat-box was not all. Though the journey was to be only a short one, the bride had taken a satchel with her of a type Alice especially loathed. This was a trifle, however, to a spirit so bent on adventure, and Alice seized the ”grip” and started off at a brisk pace.
”I can't walk so fast,” said the bride fretfully. ”My shoes hurt.”
Alice looked from her own broad-soled street shoes to the high-heeled, misshapen things on her companion's feet. The latter looked at them, too, with pride and affection. ”I'm going to wear them at the wedding and I thought that, being they was so tight, I'd best break 'em in a little first.”
”I see,” and Alice moderated her own pace to the hobbling gait of the wedding slippers. Two miles seemed more of an undertaking now and she began to wonder if she had been rash in her suggestion. ”I'll carry it through,” she said to herself. ”I know I can, and I won't back down.
We'll get tired if we keep going without rests,” she said aloud. ”So let's walk ten minutes and then rest. You can tell by your watch.”
The bride brightened at the allusion to the great plated and chased timepiece suspended from a rhinestone dove very near to her breast-bone.
”Steve give me that when we was first engaged,” she explained, and Alice smiled indulgently. ”He give me my bracelet for Christmas, and all his friends give me bangles.” She jingled the thing proudly as she spoke.
”There's thirty-four of 'em.”
”Thirty-four friends! He must be a popular man!” said Alice.
”O, he is, awful. And he's the handsomest! You just ought to see him.”
”The garment of praise is settling into place without a wrinkle,”
thought Alice. ”I hope she won't take it all, for I may need a corner of it myself, to console me for this abominable bag, and the tinkle of that bracelet. I suppose she would think it was finer than the jade one Mrs.
Langdon gave me. And I wonder what she would think if she knew my necklace was under my dress, so it wouldn't show in travelling. O, well, she's a nice little thing, and I hope Steve will be good to her.”
”I'm afraid you'll be all beat out helping me,” said the bride remorsefully, as they paused once more for a rest. ”I don't know how I'll ever thank you, anyhow.”