Part 17 (2/2)
”In my dream it seemed the most thrilling thing--I was the heroine of the hour, and Lieutenant Logan took me aside and told me that the question which I had embodied in that last line was the question of the ages. It had staggered the philosophers and scientists of all times.
n.o.body could answer that question--'how can he shoot him with no gun,'
and he was a better and a happier man, to think that I had rhymed that ringing query with the proud name of Logan. It's the silliest dream I ever had, but you can't imagine how real it seemed at the time. I was so stuck up over his compliments that I began flouncing around with my head held high, like the picture of 'Oh, fie! you haughty Jane.'”
”Oh, Joyce, what a dream to dream on wedding-cake!” exclaimed Mary, with a long indrawn breath. There was no mistaking her interpretation of it.
Everybody laughed, and Joyce hastened to explain, ”It isn't worth anything, Mary. It'll never come true, for just before I came down-stairs to breakfast I discovered my little box of cake lying on the table under a pile of ribbons. It had been there all night. I had forgotten to put it under my pillow. And,” she added, cutting short Mary's exclamation of disappointment, ”_your_ box lay beside it. We both were so busy putting away our dresses, and talking over the wedding that we forgot the most important thing of all.”
”Well, I'm certainly glad that mine wasn't under my head when I had that dreadful nightmare!” exclaimed Mary, in such a relieved tone that every one laughed again. ”I couldn't help taking it as a warning.”
”Joyce and I must have changed places in our sleep,” said Betty, when her turn came. ”She was making verses, and I was trying to draw. But I did my drawing with a thimble. I thought some one said, 'Betty always likes to put her finger in everybody's pie, and now she has a fate thimble to wear on it, she'll mix up things worse than ever.' And I said, 'No, I'll be very conservative, and only make a diagram of the way the animals should go into the ark, and then let them do as they please about following my diagram.' So I began to draw with the thimble on my finger, but instead of animals going into the ark they were people going over Tanglewood stile into the churchyard, and then into the church--a great procession of people in the funniest combinations. There was old Doctor Shelby and the minister's great-aunt, Allison and Lieutenant Stanley, Kitty and Doctor Bradford, Lloyd and Rob, and dozens and dozens besides.”
”Lloyd and Rob,” echoed the Little Colonel, her face dimpling. ”Think of that, Bobby! You nevah in yoah wildest dreams thought of that combination, now did you?”
”No, I never did,” confessed Rob, with an amused smile. ”Betty has just put it into my head. She is like the old woman who told her children not to put beans in their ears while she was gone. They never would have dreamed of doing such a thing if she hadn't suggested it, but, of course, they wanted to see how it would feel, and immediately proceeded to fill their ears with beans as soon as her back was turned.”
”You can profit by their example,” laughed Lloyd. ”They found that it hurt. It would have been bettah if they had paid no attention to her suggestion.”
”Moral,” added Rob, ”don't do it. Betty, don't you dare put any more dangerous notions in my head.”
Phil's turn came next. ”My dream is soon told,” he said. ”I had been sleeping like the dead--a perfectly dreamless sleep--till Mary woke us up with her cat-fight. That aroused me so thoroughly that I didn't go to sleep again for more than an hour. Then when I did drop off at nearly morning, I dreamed that there was a spider on my head, and I gave it a tremendous whack to kill it. It was no dream whack, I can tell you, but a real live double-fisted one, that made me see stars. It actually made a dent in my cranium and got me so wide awake that I couldn't drop off again. I got up and sat by the window till there were faint streaks of light in the sky. I did the rest of my dreaming with my eyes open, so I don't have to tell what it was about.”
”I can guess,” thought Mary, intercepting the swift glance he stole across the table at something blue. This time it was the ribbon that tied Lloyd's hair, a big bow of turquoise taffeta, knotted becomingly at the back of her neck. Lloyd, unconscious of the glance, had turned to speak to Miles Bradford, to answer his question about Sylvia Gibbs's wedding.
”Yes, it really is to take place to-night in the colohed church. M'haley was heah befoah we were awake, to get the dress and to repeat the invitation for the whole family to attend. There are evah so many white folks invited, M'haley says. All the Waltons and MacIntyres, of co'se, because Miss Allison is their patron saint, and they swear by her, and all the families for whom Sylvia has washed.”
”It is extremely fortunate for those of us who are going away so soon that she set the date as early as to-night,” said Doctor Bradford.
”Twenty-four hours later would have cut us out.”
Phil interrupted him. ”Don't bring up such disagreeable topics at the table, Bradford. It takes my appet.i.te to think that we have only one more day in the Valley--that it has come down to a matter of a few hours before we must begin our farewells.”
”Speaking of farewells,” said Rob, ”who-all's coming down to the station with me to wave good-by to Miss Bonham? She goes back to Lexington this morning.”
”We'll all go,” answered Lloyd, promptly. ”Mothah will be glad to get us out of the way while the servants give the place a grand 'aftah the ball' cleaning, and Joyce wants to see the girls once moah befoah she begins packing, to arrange several things about their journey.”
”How does it happen that Logan and Stanley are not going with Miss Bonham?” asked Rob. ”Isn't their time up, too, or can't they tear themselves away?”
”I thought you knew,” answered Joyce. ”Miss Allison arranged it all last night. You know she goes up to Prout's Neck, in Maine, for awhile every summer, and this year Allison and Kitty are going with her. She has offered to take me under her wing all the way, and has arranged her route to go right past the place where the summer art school is, on Cape Cod coast. Lieutenant Logan and Lieutenant Stanley are staying over a day longer than they had intended, in order to go part of the way with us, and Phil and Doctor Bradford are leaving a day earlier to take advantage of such good company all the way home. Won't it be jolly,--eight of us! Kitty calls it a regular house-party on wheels.”
”I certainly envy you,” answered Rob. ”Miss Allison is the best chaperone that can be imagined, just like a girl herself; and Allison and Kitty are as good as a circus any day. I'll wager it didn't take much persuading to make Stanley stay over. He hasn't eyes for anything or anybody but Allison.”
”He had eyes for Bernice Howe the night of Katie Mallard's musicale,”
said Betty. ”He scarcely left her.”
”Do you know why?” asked Rob in an aside. They were rising from the table now, strolling out to the chairs and hammocks on the shady porch.
He spoke in a low tone as he walked along beside her.
”It is very ungallant for me to say such a thing, but between you and me and the gate-post, Betty, he was roped into being so attentive. Bernice Howe beats any girl I ever saw for making dates with fellows, and handling her cards so as to make it seem she is immensely popular. It is an old trick of hers, and that night it was very apparent what she was trying to do. Alex Shelby was there, you remember, and when she saw him talking to Lloyd every chance he got, she didn't want it to appear that she was being neglected by the man who had brought her, and with a little skilful manoeuvring she managed to bag the lieutenant's attention. I've been wanting to ask you for some time, why is it that she seems so down on the Little Colonel?”
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