Ellen went on shelling peas for a few minutes.
Then she suddenly put her hands up to her own face.
There were tears in her black-browed eyes.
“I—I hope we’ll all be happy,”
she said between a sob and a laugh.
Down at the manse Una Meredith, warm, rosy, triumphant,
marched boldly into her father’s study and laid
a letter on the desk before him. His pale face
flushed as he saw the clear, fine handwriting he knew
so well. He opened the letter. It was very
short—but he shed twenty years as he read
it. Rosemary asked him if he could meet her
that evening at sunset by the spring in Rainbow Valley.
“And so,” said Miss Cornelia, “the
double wedding is to be sometime about the middle
of this month.”
There was a faint chill in the air of the early September
evening, so Anne had lighted her ever ready fire of
driftwood in the big living room, and she and Miss
Cornelia basked in its fairy flicker.
“It is so delightful—especially in
regard to Mr. Meredith and Rosemary,” said Anne.
“I’m as happy in the thought of it, as
I was when I was getting married myself. I felt
exactly like a bride again last evening when I was
up on the hill seeing Rosemary’s trousseau.”
“They tell me her things are fine enough for
a princess,” said Susan from a shadowy corner
where she was cuddling her brown boy. “I
have been invited up to see them also and I intend
to go some evening. I understand that Rosemary
is to wear white silk and a veil, but Ellen is to
be married in navy blue. I have no doubt, Mrs.
Dr. dear, that that is very sensible of her, but for
my own part I have always felt that if I were ever
married I would prefer the white and the veil,
as being more bride-like.”
A vision of Susan in “white and a veil”
presented itself before Anne’s inner vision
and was almost too much for her.
“As for Mr. Meredith,” said Miss Cornelia,
“even his engagement has made a different man
of him. He isn’t half so dreamy and absent-minded,
believe me. I was so relieved when I heard that
he had decided to close the manse and let the children
visit round while he was away on his honeymoon.
If he had left them and old Aunt Martha there alone
for a month I should have expected to wake every morning
and see the place burned down.”
“Aunt Martha and Jerry are coming here,”
said Anne. “Carl is going to Elder Clow’s.
I haven’t heard where the girls are going.”
“Oh, I’m going to take them,” said
Miss Cornelia. “Of course, I was glad
to, but Mary would have given me no peace till I asked
them any way. The Ladies’ Aid is going
to clean the manse from top to bottom before the bride
and groom come back, and Norman Douglas has arranged
to fill the cellar with vegetables. Nobody ever
saw or heard anything quite like Norman Douglas these
days, believe ME. He’s so tickled that
he’s going to marry Ellen West after wanting
her all his life. If I was Ellen—but
then, I’m not, and if she is satisfied I can
very well be. I heard her say years ago when
she was a schoolgirl that she didn’t want a tame
puppy for a husband. There’s nothing tame
about Norman, believe ME.”
