Part 15 (1/2)
The child's heart was captured immediately and she joyfully cuddled up close to this new relative, who drew her with her to a big chair relieving her own nervousness, at this interview with dignified Mrs.
Morton, by petting Chicken Little.
Marian Gates soon noticed that Jane seemed specially interested in her hair. She detected small fingers feeling it cautiously and saw Mrs.
Morton shake her head. Finally, Chicken Little reached up and whispered something. Marian laughed and nodded, then turning to Mrs. Morton explained: ”She wants me to take my hair down.”
Mrs. Morton protested but Marian bent her head and told Jane to pull out the pins. The child's fingers trembled and she touched the soft dark ma.s.ses almost reverently.
When the last pin was out and the hair tumbled a s.h.i.+mmering cloud over Marian's shoulders, over the chair arms, and on down to the floor, Mrs.
Morton exclaimed in admiration and Chicken Little stood spellbound.
Marian, blus.h.i.+ng, got to her feet.
”There's really too much,” she apologized. ”It's hard to do anything with.”
Chicken Little stepped forward fascinated, slipping her fingers among the s.h.i.+ning strands.
”It is”--she gasped finally, ”it is--clear below your knees--and it's real!”
She could hardly wait to get home and a.s.sure brother Frank of the miraculous fact. He seemed deeply interested. When he went to see Marian that evening he remarked:
”Why this _unfair discrimination_? Don't you love me as well as you do Jane?”
And blus.h.i.+ng Marian displayed her wealth of hair to a second audience no less admiring than the first.
It seemed to Chicken Little that the day of the wedding would never come. She bubbled about it till each individual member of the Morton family, including the sympathetic Alice, wished she hadn't been told.
Ernest, who was secretly almost as excited as Jane, though he considered it the manly thing to pretend that he wasn't, listened eagerly to all her facts, but got tired of her questions.
”Girls and women are always fussing about clothes. Mother says I've got to wear a stiff collar,” he complained. ”Anyway, I hope they'll have a lot to eat.”
”Oh, I know they will,” said Chicken Little. ”Jennie Gates said they were cooking and packing all the time at her house this week. She says Frank gave her a quarter. I wish he'd give me a quarter.”
”Ah, he's just makin' up with Marian's family. You don't have to be paid to like Marian--you think she's the only person on the earth now.”
As the wedding day approached, Chicken Little became more and more concerned about Alice's being left at home. She broached the subject to her mother again but was dismissed with a curt:
”It is impossible, my dear. I gave Alice the opportunity to be present and she refused. I fear she is getting notions very much above her position.”
The child was not content. She decided to tackle her brother Frank. She met him at the front gate one evening about three days before the wedding, and poured out her tale of woe. Frank considered, then patted her on the head and promised to talk it over with Marian.
The next day Miss Alice Fletcher received an engraved card requesting the pleasure of her company at the Gates-Morton nuptials. The tears stood in Alice's eyes as she read it. ”How dear of Marian!” she exclaimed.
Mrs. Morton had felt distinctly displeased at the arrival of the card, but the sight of the girl's tears disarmed her. Instead of discouraging Alice from attending the wedding as she at first intended, she turned in and helped her arrange a dress for the occasion. She did, however, ask Chicken Little somewhat sternly if she had teased Marian to invite Alice.
The long parlors of the Gates home were fragrant with evergreen and hot-house flowers that wedding night when the Morton family arrived.
Chicken Little had seen her brother's trunk start for the station, and had admired his silk hat and white gloves as the hack called for him before the rest of the family were ready. She had promised Katy and Gertie to bring them a lot of wedding cake and to remember every single thing to tell them, but especially to find out whether Marian was dressed properly as a bride should be in ”something old and something new, something borrowed and something blue.” Katy had discovered that this was absolutely necessary to a bride's future happiness.
The something new was very apparent as Marian and Frank walked slowly down the long room between the lines of friends and relatives to the little bower where the minister stood waiting for them. Marian was all in s.h.i.+mmering silken white, but she wore no veil, and her glorious hair crowned a very sweet and earnest face. She carried a quaint little bouquet of pale tea roses and heliotrope framed formally in lacy white paper, and an exquisite lace handkerchief, whose slightly yellowed border betrayed that it was something old, even to Chicken Little's childish eyes.
Frank held his head high and clasped Marian's arm close as if he were a little afraid she might vanish at the last moment. Jane noticed that there were tears in her mother's eyes and in Marian's father's and she felt worried lest it was because Marian had forgotten the ”something borrowed” and ”something blue.” She inspected her carefully the whole length of the parlors, but no hint of anything blue could she detect unless it was the heliotrope in the bouquet, and that she thought was surely lavender. Her mother wore a great deal of lavender. Perhaps, though, the handkerchief had been borrowed.