Part 23 (2/2)
”It would be much more convenable if you were married. It is very easy to get married in war time. The authorities are not near so difficult to approach on the subject. I will see what can be done by the magistrate who married Jean and Marie, and no doubt if you interview your American Amba.s.sador, much can be attended to in a short time.”
”Kent Brown, if you think----” sputtered Judy.
”I don't think a thing, I just know,” said Kent very calmly. ”Put on your hat, honey, and let's take a little walk.”
”Well, all right--but----” Was this the Judy Kean who prided herself on so well knowing her own mind, calmly consenting to be married against her will? Was it against her will? She suddenly remembered the communings she had had with herself, in which she had cried out to Kent: ”Why, why, did you not make me go with you?”
”I shall have to rip the lining out of my hat before I can go out,” she said quite meekly.
”The lining out of your hat?” questioned Kent.
”Yes, you see I went into mourning when--when----” and Judy, now that it was all over, still could not voice the terrible thing she thought had happened to Kent.
”Please don't rip it out until I see you in it. Not many men live to see how their widows look mourning for them.”
”Widows, indeed! Kent Brown, you presume too much!” exclaimed Judy, but she could not help laughing. The hat was very becoming and she was not loathe to wear it, just once.
First Mere Tricot must be a.s.sisted with the dishes, however; but then Judy got ready to go walking with Kent.
Pere Tricot undertook to be guide to Jim Castleman, offering to lead him to the proper place to enlist.
”I'll only look into it to-day,” said Jim, grasping Kent's hand. ”I shan't join for keeps until I have officiated as best man.”
Judy, who had gone into Marie's tiny bedroom to get into her rescued serge suit, overheard this remark and blushed to the roots of her fluffy hair. As she put on her white lined hat, she peeped again into the mirror: ”Judy Kean, you are much too rosy for a widow,” she admonished her image.
Mere Tricot saw them off, her good man and Jim to the recruiting station, and Kent and Judy to the Luxembourg Gardens, a spot hallowed by lovers.
”Well, well!” she said to herself. ”The good G.o.d has brought the poor lamb her lover from the grave. I am glad, very glad,--but it is certainly a pity to waste all that good dye the butcher's wife saved for us. It is not good when kept too long, either. I won't throw it out yet a while, though,--some one will be wanting it, perhaps.”
CHAPTER XX.
A WAR BRIDE.
Marrying in Paris was certainly a much easier matter than it had been almost two years before when Molly Brown and Edwin Green had struggled to have the nuptial knot tied. Judy's baptismal certificate was not demanded as had been Molly's, and the long waiting for research work, as Kent expressed it, was not required. Mere Tricot undertook to engineer the affair and did it with such expedition that it could have been accomplished even before Judy got her trunk from Giverny.
It was very nice to have one's trunk again, although it really was embarra.s.sing to take up so much of the Tricots' living room with the huge American affair.
”It seems funny to be married without any trousseau,” Judy confided to Mere Tricot.
”No trousseau! And what is in that great box if not trousseau?”
”I am sure I don't know. I really haven't any clothes to speak of that I can remember,” declared Judy.
<script>