“Alexander!”
“Alexander. He is quite pleased with the idea, and has constructed an implement—a sort of spade, cut out of new pine wood—for the purpose. He says it will be a sight easier than digging flower-beds. We will set about it next week; for the cake improves by keeping, and as it is the heaviest job we have to do, it will be well to get it out of the way early.”
“Sha’n’t you have a floral bell, or a bower to stand in, or something of that kind?” ventured Clover, timidly.
“Indeed I shall not,” replied Katy. “I particularly dislike floral bells and bowers. They are next worst to anchors and harps and ‘floral pillows’ and all the rest of the dreadful things that they have at funerals. No, we will have plenty of fresh flowers, but not in stiff arrangements. I want it all to seem easy and to be easy. Don’t look so disgusted, Clovy.”
“Oh, I’m not disgusted. It’s your wedding. I want you to have everything in your own way.”
“It’s everybody’s wedding, I think,” said Katy, tenderly. “Everybody is so kind about it. Did you see the thing that Polly sent this morning?”
“No. It must have come after I went out. What was it?”
“Seven yards of beautiful nun’s lace which she bought in Florence. She says it is to trim a morning dress; but it’s really too pretty. How dear Polly is! She sends me something almost every day. I seem to be in her thoughts all the time. It is because she loves Ned so much, of course; but it is just as kind of her.”
“I think she loves you almost as much as Ned,” said Clover.
“Oh, she couldn’t do that; Ned is her only brother. There is Amy at the gate now.”
It was a much taller Amy than had come home from Italy the year before who was walking toward them under the budding locust-boughs. Roman fever had seemed to quicken and stimulate all Amy’s powers, and she had grown very fast during the past year. Her face was as frank and childlike as ever, and her eyes as blue; but she was prettier than when she went to Europe, for her cheeks were pink, and the mane of waving hair which framed them in was very becoming. The hair was just long enough now to touch her shoulders; it was turning brown as it lengthened, but the ends of the locks still shone with childish gold, and caught the sun in little shining rings as it filtered down through the tree branches.
She kissed Clover several times, and gave Katy a long, close hug; then she produced a parcel daintily hid in silver paper.
“Tanta,” she said,—this was a pet name lately invented for Katy,—“here is something for you from mamma. It’s something quite particular, I think, for mamma cried when she was writing the note; not a hard cry, you know, but just two little teeny-weeny tears in her eyes. She kept smiling, though, and she looked happy, so I guess it isn’t anything very bad. She said I was to give it to you with her best, best love.”
Katy opened the parcel, and beheld a square veil of beautiful old blonde. The note said:
This was my wedding-veil, dearest Katy, and my mother wore it before me. It has been laid aside all these years with the idea that perhaps Amy might want it some day; but instead I send it to you, without whom there would be no Amy to wear this or anything else. I think it would please Ned to see it on your head, and I know it would make me very happy; but if you don’t feel like using it, don’t mind for a moment saying so to
Your loving
Polly.
Katy handed the note silently to Clover, and laid her face for a little while among the soft folds of the lace, about which a faint odor of roses hung like the breath of old-time and unforgotten loves and affections.
“Shall you?” queried Clover, softly.
“Why, of course! Doesn’t it seem too sweet? Both our mothers!”
“There!” cried Amy, “you are going to cry too, Tanta! I thought weddings were nice funny things. I never supposed they made people feel badly. I sha’n’t ever let Mabel get married, I think. But she’ll have to stay a little girl always in that case, for I certainly won’t have her an old maid.”
“What do you know about old maids, midget?” asked Clover.
“Why, Miss Clover, I have seen lots of them. There was that one at the Pension Suisse; you remember, Tanta? And the two on the steamer when we came home. And there’s Miss Fitz who made my blue frock; Ellen said she was a regular old maid. I never mean to let Mabel be like that.”
“I don’t think there’s the least danger,” remarked Katy, glancing at the inseparable Mabel, who was perched on Amy’s arm, and who did not look a day older than she had done eighteen months previously. “Amy, we’re going to make wedding-cake next week,—heaps and heaps of wedding-cake. Don’t you want to come and help?”
“Why, of course I do. What fun! Which day may I come?”
The cake-making did really turn out fun. Many hands made light work of what would have been a formidable job for one or two. It was all done gradually. Johnnie cut the golden citron quarters into thin transparent slices in the sitting-room one morning while the others were sewing, and reading Tennyson aloud. Elsie and Amy made a regular frolic of the currant-washing. Katy, with Debby’s assistance, weighed and measured; and the mixture was enthusiastically stirred by Alexander, with the “spade” which he had invented, in a large new wash-tub. Then came the baking, which for two days filled the house with spicy, plum-puddingy odors; then the great feat of icing the big square loaves; and then the cutting up, in which all took part. There was much careful measurement that the slices might be an exact fit; and the kitchen rang with bright laughter and chat as Katy and Clover wielded the sharp bread-knives, and the others fitted the portions into their boxes, and tied the ribbons in crisp little bows. Many delicious crumbs and odd corners and fragments fell to the share of the younger workers; and altogether the occasion struck Amy as so enjoyable that she announced—with her mouth full—that she had changed her mind, and that Mabel might get married as often as she pleased, if she would have cake like that every time,—a liberality of permission which Mabel listened to with her invariable waxen smile.
When all was over, and the last ribbons tied, the hundreds of little boxes were stacked in careful piles on a shelf of the inner closet of the doctor’s office to wait till they were wanted,—an arrangement which naughty Clover pronounced eminently suitable, since there should always be a doctor close at hand where there was so much wedding-cake. But before all this was accomplished, came what Katy, in imitation of one of Miss Edgeworth’s heroines, called “The Day of Happy Letters.”
Chapter II.
The Day of Happy Letters
The arrival of the morning boat with letters and newspapers from the East was the great event of the day in Burnet. It was due at eleven o’clock; and everybody, consciously or unconsciously, was on the lookout for it. The gentlemen were at the office bright and early, and stood chatting with each other, and fingering the keys of their little drawers till the rattle of the shutter announced that the mail was distributed. Their wives and daughters at home, meanwhile, were equally in a state of expectation, and whatever they might be doing kept ears and eyes on the alert for the step on the gravel and the click of the latch which betokened the arrival of the family news-bringer.
Doctors cannot command their time like other people, and Dr. Carr was often detained by his patients, and made late for the mail, so it was all the pleasanter a surprise when on the great day of the cake-baking he