Part 28 (1/2)

”We shall have to go to a dressmaker in Banbridge. We have never had any work done here, and there can be no difficulty about it.”

”But, Anna, how can we have her married with a trousseau made in Banbridge?”

”It is either that or no trousseau at all.”

Mrs. Carroll seldom wept, but she actually shed a few tears over the prospect of a shabbily made trousseau for Ina. ”And she will go in the best society in Kentucky, too,” she said, pitifully. ”They'll attribute it all to the lack of taste in the North,” Anna said.

Ina herself made no objection whatever to employing the Banbridge dressmaker; in fact, she seemed to have little interest in her clothes at first. After a while she became rather feverishly excited over them.

”I have always wondered why girls cared so much about their wedding-clothes,” she told her sister after two weeks, when the preparations were well under way, ”but now I know.”

”Why?” asked Charlotte. The two were coming home from the dressmaker's, where Ina had been trying on gowns for an hour. It was late in the afternoon and nearly time for Captain Carroll's train.

”Why?” repeated Charlotte, when Ina did not answer at once.

”In order to keep from thinking so much about the marriage itself,”

said Ina, tersely. She did not look at her sister, but kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead of her.

Charlotte, however, almost stopped. ”Ina,” said she, in a distressed tone--”Ina, dear, you don't feel like that?”

”Why not?” inquired Ina, defiantly.

”Oh, Ina, you ought not to get married if you feel like that!”

”Why not? All girls feel like that when they are going to be married.

They must.”

”Oh, Ina, I know they don't!”

”How do you know? You were never going to get married.”

That argument was rather too much for Charlotte, but she continued to gaze at her sister with a shocked and doubtful air as they walked along the shady sidewalk towards home. ”I am almost sure it isn't right for a girl to feel so, anyhow,” she said, persistently.

”Yes, it is, too,” Ina said, laughing easily. ”Charlotte, honey, I really think my things are going to do very well. I really think so.

That tan canvas is a beauty, and so is the red foulard. She is really a very good dressmaker.”

”I think so too, dear,” Charlotte agreed. ”I like the wedding-gown, too.”

”Yes, so do I; it is very pretty, though that does not so much matter.”

”Why, Ina Carroll!”

Ina laughed mischievously. ”Now I have shocked you, dear. Of course it matters in one way, but I shall never wear it again after the ceremony; and you know I don't care much about the Banbridge people, and they will be the only ones to see me in it, and only that once.”

”But, Ina, he--your--Major Arms.”

Ina laughed again. ”Oh, well, he thinks me perfectly beautiful anyway,” said she, in the tone of one to whom love was as dross because of the superabundance of it.

”Ina,” said Charlotte, with a solemn and timidly reflective air, ”I don't believe you think half as much of him as you would if he didn't think so much of you.”