Laddie Part 21

When Sally Married Peter

"Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble there's no place like home!

A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere."

When they began arranging the house for the wedding, it could be seen that they had been expecting it, and getting ready for a long time.

From all the closets, shelves and chests poured heaps of new things.

First, the walls were cleaned and some of them freshly papered, then the windows were all washed long before regular housecleaning time, the floors were scrubbed and new carpet put down. Mother had some window blinds that Winfield had brought her from New York in the spring, and she had laid them away; no one knew why, then. We all knew now. When mother was ready to put them up, father had a busy day and couldn't help her, and she was really provoked. She almost cried about it, when Leon rode in bringing the mail, and said Hannah Dover had some exactly like ours at her windows, that her son had sent from Illinois. Father felt badly enough then, for he always did everything he could to help mother to be first with everything; but so she wouldn't blame him, he said crosslike that if she had let him put them up when they came, as he wanted to, she'd have been six months ahead.

When they finally got ready to hang the blinds no one knew how they went. They were a beautiful shiny green, plain on one side, and on the other there was a silver border across the bottom and one pink rose as big as a pie plate. Mother had neglected to ask Winfield on which side the rose belonged. Father said from the way the roll ran, it went inside. Mother said they were rolled that way to protect the roses, and that didn't prove anything. Laddie said he would jump on a horse and ride round the section, and see how Hannah Dover had hers, and exactly opposite would be right. Everyone laughed, but no one thought he meant it. Mother had father hold one against the window, and she stepped outside to see if she could tell from there. When she came in she said the flower looked mighty pretty, and she guessed that was the way, so father started hanging them. He had only two up when Laddie came racing down the Big Hill bareback, calling for him to stop.

"I tell you that's not right, mother!" he said as he hurried in.

"But I went outside and father held one, and it looked real pretty,"

said mother.

"One! Yes!" said Laddie. "But have you stopped to consider how two rows across the house are going to look? Nine big pink roses, with the sun shining on them! Anything funnier than Dovers' front I never saw.

And look here!"

Laddie picked up a blind. "See this plain back? It's double coated like a glaze. That is so the sun shining through gla.s.s won't fade it.

The flowers would be gone in a week. They belong inside, mother, sure as you live."

"Then when the blinds are rolled to the middle sash in the daytime no one can see them," wailed mother, who was wild about pink roses.

"But at night, when they are down, you can put the curtains back enough to let the roses show, and think how pretty they will look then."

"Laddie is right!" said father, climbing on the barrel to take down the ones he had fixed.

"What do you think, girls?" asked mother.

"I think the Princess is coming down the Little Hill," said Sh.e.l.ley.

"Hurry, father! Take them down before she sees! I'm sure they're wrong."

Father got one all right, but tore the corner of the other. Mother scolded him dreadfully cross, and he was so fl.u.s.tered he forgot about being on the barrel, so he stepped back the same as on the floor, and fell crashing. He might have broken some of his bones, if Laddie hadn't seen and caught him.

"If you are SURE the flowers go inside, fix one before she comes!"

cried mother.

Father stepped too close the edge of the chair, and by that time he didn't know how to hang anything, so Laddie climbed up and had one nailed before the Princess stopped. She came to bring Sally the handkerchief, and it was the loveliest one any of us ever had seen.

There was a little patch in the middle about four inches square, and around it a wide ruffle of dainty lace. It was made to carry in a hand covered with white lace mitts, when you were wearing a wedding gown of silver silk, lined with white. Of course it wouldn't have been the slightest use for a funeral or with a cold in your head. And it had come from across the sea! From the minute she took it by a pinch in the middle, Sally carried her head so much higher than she ever had before, that you could notice the difference.

Laddie went straight on nailing up the blinds, and every one he fixed he let down full length so the Princess could see the roses were inside; he was so sure he was right. After she had talked a few minutes she noticed the blinds going up. Laddie, in a front window, waved to her from the barrel. She laughed and answered with her whip, and then she laughed again.

"Do you know," she said, "there is the funniest thing at Dovers'. I rode past on the way to Groveville this morning and they have some blinds like those you are putting up."

"Indeed?" inquired my mother. "Winfield sent us these from New York in the spring, but I thought the hot summer sun would fade them, so I saved them until the fall cleaning. The wedding coming on makes us a little early but----"

"Well, they may not be exactly the same," said the Princess. "I only saw from the highway." She meant road; there were many things she said differently. "Have yours big pink roses and silver scrolls inside?"

"Yes," said mother.

The Princess bubbled until it made you think one of those yellow oriole birds had perched on her saddle. "That poor woman has gone and put hers up wrong side out. The effect of all those big pink roses on her white house front is most amusing. It looks as if the house were covered with a particularly gaudy piece of comfort calico. Only fancy!"

She laughed again and rode away. Mother came in just gasping.

"Well, for all His mercies, large and small, the Lord be praised!" she cried piously, as she dropped into the big rocking chair. "THAT is what I consider escaping by the skin of your teeth!"

Then father and Laddie laughed, and said they thought so too. When the blinds were up, the outside looked well, and you should have seen the inside! The woodwork was enamelled white, and the wall paper was striped in white and silver. Every so far on the silver there was a little pink moss rose having green leaves. The carpet was plum red and green in wide stripes, and the lace curtains were freshly washed, snowy, and touched the floor. The big rocker, the straight-backed chairs, and the sofa were beautiful red mahogany wood, and the seats shining haircloth. If no one happened to be looking, you could sit on a sofa arm, stick your feet out and shoot off like riding down a haystack; the landing was much better. On the sofa you bounced two feet high the first time; one, the second; and a little way the third.

On the haystack, maybe you hit a soft spot, and maybe you struck a rock. Sometimes if you got smart, and tried a new place, and your feet caught in a tangle of weeds and stuck, you came up straight, pitched over, and landed on your head. THEN if you struck a rock, you were still, quite a while. I was once. But you never dared let mother see you--on the sofa, I mean; she didn't care about the haystack.

There were pictures in oval black frames having fancy edges, and a whatnot where all our Christmas and birthday gifts, almost too dainty to handle, were kept. You fairly held your breath when you looked at the nest of spun green gla.s.s, with the white dove in it, that George Washington Mitch.e.l.l gave to Sh.e.l.ley. Of course a dove's nest was never deep, and round, and green, and the bird didn't have red eyes and a black bill. I thought whoever could blow gla.s.s as beautifully as that, might just as easy have made it right while he was at it; but anyway, it was pretty. There were pitchers, mugs, and vases, almost too delicate to touch, and the cloth-covered box with braids of hair coiled in wreaths from the heads of the little fever and whooping cough sisters.

Laddie asked Sally if she and Peter were going to have the ceremony performed while they sat on the sofa. Seemed the right place. They had done all their courting there, even on hot summer days; but I supposed that was because Sally didn't want to be seen fixing Peter's tie until she was ready. She made no bones about it then. She fixed it whenever she pleased; likewise he held her hand. Sh.e.l.ley said that was disgusting, and you wouldn't catch her. Leon said he bet a dollar he would; and I said if he knew he'd get beaten as I did, I bet two dollars he wouldn't tell what he saw. The mantel was white, with vases of the lovely gra.s.ses that grew beside the stream at the foot of the Big Hill. Mother gathered the fanciest every fall, dried them, and dipped them in melted alum coloured with copperas, aniline, and indigo.

Then she took bunches of the colours that went together best and made bouquets for the big vases. They were pretty in the daytime, but at night you could watch them sparkle and shimmer forever.

I always thought the sitting-room was nicer than the parlour. The woodwork was white enamel there too, but the bureau and chairs were just cherry and not too precious to use. They were every bit as pretty. The mantel was much larger. I could stand up in the fireplace, and it took two men to put on an everyday log, four the Christmas one. On each side were the book shelves above, and the linen closets below. The mantel set between these, and mother always used the biggest, most gorgeous bouquets there, because she had so much room. The hearth was a slab of stone that came far into the room. We could sit on it and crack nuts, roast apples, chestnuts, and warm our cider, then sweep all the muss we made into the fire. The wall paper was white and pale pink in stripes, and on the pink were little handled baskets filled with tiny flowers of different colours. We sewed the rags for the carpet ourselves, and it was the prettiest thing. One stripe was wide, all gray, brown, and dull colours, and the other was pink. There were green blinds and lace curtains here also, and nice braided rugs that all of us worked on of winter evenings. Everything got spicker and spanner each day.

Mother said there was no use in putting down a carpet in a dining-room where you constantly fed a host, and the boys didn't clean their feet as carefully as they should in winter; but there were useful rags where they belonged, and in our bedroom opening from it also. The dining-room wall paper had a broad stripe of rich cream with pink cabbage roses scattered over it and a narrow pink stripe, while the woodwork was something perfectly marvellous. I didn't know what kind of wood it was, but a man who could turn his hand to anything, painted it. First, he put on a pale yellow coat and let it dry. Then he added wood brown, and while it was wet, with a coa.r.s.e toothed comb, a rag, and his fingers, he imitated the grain, the even wood, and knotholes of dressed lumber, until many a time I found myself staring steadily at a knot to see if a worm wouldn't really come working out. You have to see a thing like that to understand how wonderful it is. You couldn't see why they washed the bedding, and took the feathers from the pillows and steamed them in mosquito netting bags and dried them in the shade, when Sally's was to be a morning wedding, but they did. I even had to take a bucket and gather from around the walls all the little heaps of rocks and sh.e.l.ls that Uncle Abraham had sent mother from California, take them out and wash and wipe them, and stack them back, with the fanciest ones on top. He sent her a ring made of gold he dug himself.

She always kept the ring in a bottle in her bureau, and she meant to wear it at the wedding, with her new silk dress. I had a new dress too. I don't know how they got everything done. All of them worked, until the last few days they were perfect cross patches.

When they couldn't find another thing indoors to scour, they began on the yard, orchard, barn and road. Mother even had Leon stack the wood pile straighter. She said when corded wood leaned at an angle, it made people seem shiftless; and she never pa.s.sed a place where it looked that way that her fingers didn't just itch to get at it. He had to pull every ragweed on each side of the road as far as our land reached, and lay every rail straight in the fences. Father had to take spikes and our biggest maul and go to the bridges at the foot of the Big and the Little Hill, and see that every plank was fast, so none of them would rattle when important guests drove across. She said she just simply wouldn't have them in such a condition that Judge Pettis couldn't hear himself think when he crossed; for you could tell from his looks that it was very important that none of the things he thought should be lost. There wasn't a single spot about the place inside or out that wasn't gone over; and to lots of it you never would have known anything had been done if you hadn't seen, because the place was always in proper shape anyway; but father said mother acted just like that, even when her sons were married at other people's houses; and if she kept on getting worse, every girl she married off, by the time she reached me, we'd all be scoured threadbare and she'd be on the verge of the grave. May and I weeded the flowerbeds, picked all the ripe seed, and pulled up and burned all the stalks that were done blooming.

Father and Laddie went over the garden carefully; they sc.r.a.ped the walks and even shook the palings to see if one were going to come loose right at the last minute, when every one would be so fl.u.s.trated there would be no time to fix it.

Then they began to talk about arrangements for the ceremony, whether we should have our regular minister, or Presiding Elder Lemon, and what people they were going to invite. Just when we had planned to ask every one, have the wedding in the church, and the breakfast at the house, and all drive in a joyous procession to Groveville to give them a good send-off in walked Sally. She had been visiting Peter's people, and we planned a lot while she was away.

"What's going on here?" she asked, standing in the doorway, dangling her bonnet by the ties.

She never looked prettier. Her hair had blown out in little curls around her face from riding, her cheeks were so pink, and her eyes so bright.

"We were talking about having the ceremony in the church, so every one can be comfortably seated, and see and hear well," answered mother.

Sally straightened up and began jerking the roses on her bonnet far too roughly for artificial flowers. Perhaps I surprised you with that artificial word, but I can spell and define it; it's easy divided into syllables. Goodness knows, I have seen enough flowers made from the hair of the dead, wax, and paper, where you get the shape, but the colour never is right. These of Sally's were much too bright, but they were better than the ones made at our house. Hers were of cloth and bought at a store. You couldn't tell why, but Sally jerked her roses; I wished she wouldn't, because I very well knew they would be used to trim my hat the next summer, and she said: "Well, people don't have to be comfortable during a wedding ceremony; they can stand up if I can, and as for seeing and hearing, I'm asking a good many that I don't intend to have see or hear either one!"

"My soul!" cried mother, and she dropped her hands and her mouth fell open, like she always told us we never should let ours, while she stared at Sally.

"I don't care!" said Sally, straightening taller yet; her eyes began to shine and her lips to quiver, as if she would cry in a minute; "I don't care----!"

"Which means, my child, that you DO care, very much," said father.

"Suppose you cease such reckless talk, and explain to us exactly what it is that you do want."

Sally gave her bonnet an awful jerk. Those roses would look like sin before my turn to wear them came, and she said: "Well then, I do care!

I care with all my might! The church is all right, of course; but I want to be married in my very own home! Every one can think whatever they please about their home, and so can I, and what I think is, that this is the nicest and the prettiest place in all the world, and I belong here----"

Father lifted his head, his face began to shine, and his eyes to grow teary; while mother started toward Sally. She put out her hand and held mother from her at arm's length, and she turned and looked behind her through the sitting-room and parlour, and then at us, and she talked so fast you never could have understood what she said if you hadn't known all of it anyway, and thought exactly the same thing yourself.

"I have just loved this house ever since it was built," she said, "and I've had as good times here as any girl ever had. If any one thinks I'm so very anxious to leave it, and you, and mother, and all the others, why it's a big mistake. Seems as if a girl is expected to marry and go to a home of her own; it's drummed into her and things fixed for her from the day of her birth; and of course I do like Peter, but no home in the world, not even the one he provides for me, will ever be any dearer to me than my own home; and as I've always lived in it, I want to be married in it, and I want to stay here until the very last second----"