Part 2 (2/2)

On the following day Elizabeth North encountered Miss Tripp on the street. She was about to pa.s.s her after a shy salutation, when Miss Tripp held out both hands in a pretty, impulsive gesture. ”I was just on my way to see you, dear; but if you are going out, of course I'll wait till another day. My dear, he's _simply_ perfect! and I really _couldn't_ wait to tell you so. Do tell me when you are to be married?

In June, I hope, for then I shall be here to help.”

Elizabeth blushed prettily, her shy gaze taking in the details of Miss Tripp's modish costume. She was wondering if a jacket made like the one Miss Tripp was wearing would be becoming. ”I--we haven't thought so far ahead as that,” she said. Then with a sudden access of her new dignity.

”Mr. Brewster expects to return to Boston in the spring. The work here will be finished by that time.”

Miss Tripp's eyes brightened with a speculative gleam. ”Oh, then you will live in _Boston_! How _delighted_ I am to hear _that_! Did you know your _fiance_ is related to Mrs. Mortimer Van Duser? and that he has _dined_ there? _You didn't?_ But of course you must have heard of Mrs. Van Duser; I believe your minister's wife is a relative of hers.

But Mrs. Van Duser doesn't approve of Mrs. Pettibone, I'm told; her opinions are so odd. But I _am_ so glad for you, my dear; if everything is managed properly you will have an _entree_ to the most exclusive circles.” Miss Tripp's eyebrows and shoulders expressed such unfeigned interest and delight in her prospects that Elizabeth beamed and smiled in her turn. She wished confusedly that Miss Tripp would not talk to her about her engagement; it was too sacred, too wonderful a thing to discuss on the street with a mere acquaintance like Miss Tripp. Yet all the while she was rosily conscious of her new ring, which she could feel under her glove, and a childish desire to uncover its astonis.h.i.+ng brilliancy before such warmly appreciative eyes presently overcame her desire to escape. ”Won't you walk home with me?” she asked; ”mother will be so glad to see you.”

”Oh, _thank_ you! Indeed I was coming to condole with your dear mother and to wish you all sorts of happiness. I've so often spoken of you to my friends in Boston.”

Elizabeth wondered what Miss Tripp could possibly have said about her to her friends in Boston. But she was a.s.sured by Miss Tripp's brilliant smile that it had been something agreeable. When she came into the room after removing her hat and cloak she found her mother deep in conversation with the visitor, who made room for her on the sofa with a smile and a graceful tilt of her plumed head.

”We've been talking about you every minute, dear child. You'll see what a _sweet_ wedding you'll have. Everything must be of the very latest; and it isn't a minute too soon to begin on your trousseau. You really ought to have everything hand-embroidered, you know; those flimsy laces and machine-made edges are so common, you won't _think_ of them; and they don't wear a bit well, either.”

Mrs. North glanced appealingly at her daughter. ”Oh,” she said, in a bewildered tone, ”I guess Elizabeth isn't intending to be married for a long, long time yet; I--we can't spare her.”

Miss Tripp laughed airily. ”_Poor_ mamma,” she murmured with a look of deep sympathy, ”it _is_ too bad; isn't it? But, really, I'm sure you're to be congratulated on your future son-in-law. He belongs to a _very_ aristocratic family--Mrs. Mortimer Van Duser is a relative, you know; and dear Betty must have everything _suitable_. I'll do some pretty things, dear; I'd love to, and I'll begin this very day, though the doctor has absolutely forbidden me to use my eyes; but I simply can't resist the temptation.”

Then she had exclaimed over the sparkle of Elizabeth's modest diamond, which caught her eyes at the moment, and presently in a perfumed rush of silken skirts and laces and soft furs Miss Tripp swept away, chatting to the outermost verge of the frosty air in her sweet-toned drawling voice, so different from the harsh nasal accents familiar to Innisfield ears.

Elizabeth drew a deep breath as she watched the slim, erect figure move lightly away. She felt somehow very ignorant and countrified and totally unfit for her high destiny as a member of Boston's select circles. As a result of these unwonted stirrings in her young heart she went up to her room and began to look over her wardrobe with growing dissatisfaction.

Her mother hearing the sound of opening and shutting drawers came into the room and stood looking on with what appeared to the girl a provokingly indifferent expression on her plump middle-aged face.

”It is really too soon to begin worrying about wedding clothes, Bessie,”

observed Mrs. North with a show of maternal authority. ”Of course”--after a doubtful silence--”we might begin to make up some new underclothes. I've a good firm piece of cotton in the house, and we can buy some edges.”

The girl suddenly faced her mother, her pink lips thrust forward in an unbecoming pout. ”Why, mother,” she said, ”don't you know people don't wear things made out of common cotton cloth now; everything has to be as fine and delicate as a cobweb almost, and--hand-embroidered. You can make them or buy them in the stores. Marian had some lovely things when she went to college. All the girls wear them--except me. Of course I've never had anything of the sort; but I suppose I'll have to now!”

She shut her bureau drawer with an air of finality and leaned her puckered forehead upon her hand while the new diamond flashed its blue and white fires into her mother's perplexed eyes.

”We'll do the very best we can, dear,” Mrs. North said after a lengthening pause; ”but your father's patients don't pay their bills very promptly, and there are the boys' college expenses to be met; we'll have to think of that.”

This conversation marked the beginning of many interviews, gradually increasing in poignant interest to both mother and daughter. It appeared that ”Sam,” as Elizabeth now called her lover with a pretty hesitancy which the young man found adorable, wished to be married in June, so as to take his bride with him on a trip West, in which business and pleasure might be profitably combined.

Mrs. North demurred weakly; but Dr. North was found to be on the side of the young man. ”I don't believe in long engagements myself,” he had said, with a certain suspicious gruffness in his tones. ”I hoped we should have our daughter to ourselves for a while longer; but she's chosen otherwise, and there is no use and no need to wait. We'll have to let her go, wife, and the sooner the better, for both of them.”

The important question being thus finally decided, not only Miss Tripp but the Norths' whole circle of acquaintances in Innisfield, as well as the female relations, near and far, were found ready and anxious to engage heart and soul in Elizabeth's preparations for her wedding, which had now begun in what might be well termed solemn earnest.

”Are we going to--keep house?” Elizabeth asked her lover in the first inrush of this new tide of experience which was soon to bear her far from the old life.

”To keep house, dear, with you would be pretty close to my idea of heaven,” the young man had declared with all the fervour of the inexperienced bachelor. ”I've boarded for nearly six years now with barely a taste of home between whiles, and I'm tired of it. Don't you want to keep house, dear?”

And Elizabeth answered quite sweetly and truly that she did. ”I can cook,” she said, proud of her old-fas.h.i.+oned accomplishment in the light of her new happiness. ”We will have just a little house to begin with, and then I can do everything.”

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