“Humph,” she said as we went up the front steps, “I’ll be glad when you are married and settled, Molly Carter, so the rest of this town can quiet down into peace once more, and I sincerely hope every woman under fifty in Hillsboro who is already married will stay in that state until she reaches that age.  But I do believe if the law marched widows from grave number one to altar number two they would get into trouble and fuss along the road.  But come on in, both of you, and help me get this marriage feast ready, if I must!  The day is going by on greased wheels and I can’t let Mr. Johnson’s crotchets be neglected, Al Bennett or no Al Bennett!”

And from then on for hours and hours I was strapped to a torture wheel that turned and turned, minute after minute, as it ground spice and sugar and bridal meats and me relentlessly into a great suffering pulp.  Could I ever in all my life have hungered for food and been able to get it past the lump in my throat that grew larger with the seconds?  And if Alfred’s pudding tasted of the salt of dead sea-fruit this evening, it was from my surreptitious tears that dripped into it.

It was late, very late before Mrs. Johnson realized it and shooed me home to get ready to go to the train along with the brass band and all the other welcomes.

I hurried all I could, but for long minutes I stood in front of my mirror and questioned myself.  Could this slow, pale, dead-eyed, slim, drooping girl be the rollicking child of a Molly who had looked out of that mirror at me one short week ago?  Where were the wings on her heels, the glint in her curls, the laugh on her mouth and the devil in her eyes?

Slowly at last I lifted the blue muslin, twenty-three-inch waist shroud and let it slip over my head and fall slimly around me.  I had fastened the neck button and was fumbling the next one into the buttonhole when I suddenly heard laughing excited voices coming up the side street that ran just under my west window.  Something told me that Alfred had come on the five-down train instead of the six-up and I fairly reeled to the window and peeped through the shutters.

They were all in a laughing group around him, with Tom as master of ceremonies, and Ruth Chester was looking up into his face with an expression I am glad I can never forget.  It killed all my regrets on the score of his future.

It took two good looks to take him all in and then I must have missed some of him, for all in all, he was so large that he stretched your eyes to behold him.  He’s grown seven feet tall, I don’t know how many pounds he weighs and I don’t want anybody ever to tell me!

I had never thought enough about evolution to know whether I believed in it and woman’s suffrage, but I do now!  I know that millions of years ago a great, big, distinguished hippopotamus stepped out of the woods and frightened one of my foremothers so that she turned tail and fled through a thicket that almost tore her limb from limb, right into the arms of her own mate.  That’s what I did!  I caught that blue satin belt together with one hand and ran through my garden right over a bed of savage tiger-lilies and flung myself into John Moore’s office, slammed the door and backed up against it.