XXI
A WEDDING GARMENT
Now, during the fortnight or more in which Amy had heard not a word from Brenda, she had tried to possess her soul in patience. Although a little inclined to be cast down by trifles, she still had a strong sense of dignity, and she knew that it would be very foolish to repine at the loss of a friend who had grown indifferent to her. Yet while trying to appear philosophic when anything was said in her presence about Rockley, or the approaching wedding, her heart was still pretty sore. Fritz, by his behavior during this week or two regained all that he had previously lost in her opinion. He refrained from teasing her, and he never once made a slighting remark about Brenda, as had grown to be his custom during the days when her intimacy with Amy was at its height.
There may be some persons who in reading this may think it strange that Amy—or any one else—should attach importance to the fact that for a fortnight, or perhaps three weeks, one friend had neglected another friend. But persons who reason in this way have not witnessed the progress of a sudden intimacy between two very young girls. One of them, when a sudden fancy springs up, may attach more importance to it than to anything else which has come into her life. If she does not see her friend daily, she at least expects a letter, and a week’s silence is something absolutely inexplainable and hardly to be forgiven. Now the friendship of Amy and Brenda had at first been of this intense type, and of the two Brenda had seemed the more devoted. But to this friendship one might apply the old fable of the moon and the brooks, apply it at least in a way somewhat different from the way in which it is usually applied. For while Brenda, like the moon, had many things to occupy her attention; Amy, like one of the many brooks that admired the moon, had no other person within her vision quite so dazzling as Brenda. Amy, to be sure, in admiring Brenda, had not found her absolutely faultless; indeed, as she thought of her, it seemed as if it was on account of her faults that she had liked the bright, almost dashing girl, so unlike any one she had ever known.
When Brenda’s failure to visit her was explained by the news (picked up in some way by Fritz) that she was away, Amy naturally enough looked for a letter. But when, after a reasonable time, it did not come, she tried to put Brenda out of her mind. If she was not wholly successful in this, she at least did not mention her name, and she found a little consolation in writing sad verses.
At last one afternoon, as they sat in their favorite place by the rocks, Fritz could stand it no longer.
“You must be pretty desperate,” he cried. He had been watching Amy for half an hour out of the corner of his eyes, although ostensibly engaged in skipping stones in the water, which happened then to be unusually calm.
“Oh, Fritz, how absurd! What do you mean?” In her heart Amy had a fair idea of Fritz’s meaning.
“Come, now, Amy, I know that I have teased you, and I dare say that you think that I am glad that those girls have acted like that; they have certainly been kind of mean. But really I do feel sorry, and I just hope that you ’ll have a chance to pay them back.”
“No,” she said, without any bitterness, “I don’t really feel that way; but of course it’s disappointing. That’s why I never wished to know those city people before. I always felt that they could not be entirely depended on. Their way of living is very different from mine. They have so many friends, and they can travel and do anything almost whenever they want to. But then, Brenda seemed more anxious for my acquaintance than I for hers, and she is so bright and amusing that I grew very fond of her.” Amy spoke in the past tense, as if her acquaintance with Brenda was entirely a thing of the past, and as if she had little hope of resuming it. Yet it was hardly three weeks since they had all been together,—Amy, Nora and Brenda and Julia,—and in view of the various exciting events of the interval, it was perhaps not strange that Brenda had not written to her. Now it happened that the afternoon of this conversation of Fritz and Amy, happened to be the very day on which Julia and Brenda were to go to the city, and it happened that that evening, as Julia sat with her aunt, talking of various things connected with the wedding, she asked her if she as yet had thought of inviting Amy to the festivities.
“I am glad that you spoke of it, Julia,” said Mrs. Barlow; “you always are so thoughtful. I had meant before this to call on Mrs. Redmond the day before I went to New York to meet Agnes. There was no one at home but a little Irish maid, and I left my card. I was out when Mrs. Redmond returned my call, and thus we have never met. But I am sure that the mother of a bright girl like Amy must be an interesting woman. I have been meaning to give Amy an informal invitation to come to Rockley the day of the wedding. She will enjoy herself, I am sure, with the other young people, and it will please Brenda. Oh, Brenda!”—for the latter had just entered the room.
“I hope that you have told Amy about the wedding, so that she won’t be entirely taken by surprise. I am going to send her an informal invitation to come over on the day of the wedding. I shall write this evening.”
“To tell you the truth,” said Brenda, shamefacedly, “I have n’t written to her since I left Rockley. You see, there was so much going on, with the engagement, and the excursions with Ralph, and everything.”
“Well, well, Brenda, I should have expected something very different from you. At least, I had hoped that you had overcome this carelessness. Amy must think it very singular not to have had a word from you, especially if she has heard rumors of the wedding.”
“Oh, mamma, don’t look so cross! I ’ll go to see her the minute I get home, I really will.”
“Nevertheless I will write to her myself to-night. She might like a few days’ warning, if she is to come to the wedding.”
“Shall you ask her mother, too?”
“Why, yes, to the church, Brenda. But she knows us so slightly that she would hardly care to come to the house, even if we should ask her. In my note to Amy I will make it plain that only intimate friends are invited to the house, and a few young girls who are your especial friends.”
When Amy received Mrs. Barlow’s note the next day she was thrown into a state of great excitement.
“There,” said Mrs. Redmond, when she showed it to her, “you see that you were not altogether forgotten. Mrs. Barlow says, I see, that Brenda is coming to see you as soon as she returns. I hope that you will be a little more cheerful than you have been lately.”
“Oh, yes,—oh, yes, indeed,” replied Amy; “but do you think I can go to the wedding? What can I wear?”
Mrs. Redmond looked serious for a moment. “That is a question rather hard to answer. We have so little time for preparation, and you are so nearly grown-up now, Amy, that I should not care to have you go among strangers unless— Well, we ’ll see. You know this summer we have very little to spend, and it does not seem as if it ought to be spent for a dress that you might wear only once or twice before it was outgrown.”
“I know it, mamma; but still—” There was a decided shadow on Amy’s brow.
“But still,” continued her mother, smiling, “I think that there will be some way by which you can go to the wedding. Only I will admit that I am puzzled.”
“What’s this about the wedding?” asked cousin Joan fretfully that afternoon. “Have they given you an invitation after all?”
“Oh, yes; we have a regular engraved invitation to the wedding itself, and Mrs. Barlow has written a note inviting me to the wedding breakfast. There are going to be a lot of young people, and it will be great fun—if I can go,” she said, a little under her breath.
“Humph!” said cousin Joan, “I did n’t suppose they’d take as much trouble as that for you. A note from Mrs. Barlow did you say?”
“Yes,” answered Amy; “I ’ll show it to you if you wish,” and she handed the little square envelope to cousin Joan.
Although her expression did not brighten up perceptibly, the old lady showed that she was rather pleased by the attention that had been offered Amy.
“What ’ll you wear?” she asked, with more interest than she usually showed in Amy’s affairs.
“That’s just it, cousin Joan. If a pretty dress can’t be managed without too much trouble and expense, why, perhaps I ’ll have to give it up, although of course I don’t want to do that.”
“Yes, to be sure,” said cousin Joan, so absent-mindedly that Amy desisted from further conversation. She moved around the room as noiselessly as usual, doing various little things for the invalid’s comfort; and after a time she went down to the little kitchen to get tea ready. When she returned with the tray, cousin Joan looked much more cheerful than was her wont at this time of day.
“After you ’ve had your tea, Amy,” she said, “I wish that you’d ask your mother to open that trunk of mine that she sent to the store-room. There’s a green paste-board box,—a large one,—just under the tray, and I wish that she ’d bring it to me. Here’s the key.”
When Mrs. Redmond and Amy went in to cousin Joan’s room with the green box, the old woman seemed rather excited. “Let me see it!” she said, putting out her hands rather eagerly, and trying to untie the pink tape which held the cover securely.
Mrs. Redmond helped the old woman, for her trembling hands did not seem equal to the task.
When the cover was removed, she turned back a layer of some tissue paper that was near the top, and there, beneath it, lay some white material.
“Lift it out,” she said; “lift it out, Amy, I want you to see it!”
“Certainly,” responded Amy, lifting the soft web over her carefully with both hands, and taking it to the old lady.
“There!” exclaimed cousin Joan, pulling a string which held the folds in place; “it looks all right, does n’t it? ”
Before them rippled a mass of creamy white material, transparent, like muslin, yet silkier.
“How lovely!” cried Amy. “What is it, cousin Joan?”
“Why, it’s pineapple silk. My brother brought it from India years and years ago; but it was n’t fit for me to wear, or at least I was n’t fit for it, so I just put it away, and now, well—Amy, I should think it would be just the thing for you to wear over to the wedding; it would n’t need so very much trimming, and it could be made up real easily. I ’ve been thinking about it since I lay here, and I don’t see why it should n’t be made just to suit you.”
Amy was speechless at this thoughtfulness on the part of cousin Joan, and she did n’t know exactly what to say, or, rather, she did not try to say anything. Mrs. Redmond was the first to speak.
“Well, cousin Joan, this is certainly very generous in you. But I’m not quite sure that we ought to accept it. It’s a rather expensive material for a little girl to wear, and I have never—”
“Now, mamma, don’t spoil it all, when I want it so much.”
“Why, Amy, I am surprised at you!” and there was a note of reproof in Mrs. Redmond’s voice.
“Oh, mamma, I did n’t mean to speak in that way; but I—but you will let me have the dress, won’t you?”
Even cousin Joan smiled at the eagerness in Amy’s tone.
“Why, since you want it so much,, what can I say? But you have n’t thanked cousin Joan.”
Whereupon, “Oh, cousin Joan, how careless I am! Thank you ever so much! You see, I was so overpowered at first. It is such beautiful material. Now, mamma, do say that I can have it. You can see, cousin Joan, how pleased I am with it.”
“There is n’t much doubt of that,” said the old woman, almost smiling at Amy’s impetuosity. “I’m pretty sure that your mother will let you wear it. There, you’d better keep it yourself now, and lock up the trunk.”
“Yes, ’m,” and Amy, in turn, laid the transparent white stuff in her mother’s lap, and ran off to fasten up the trunk.
“There,” said her mother, as she returned to the room, “I have been talking it over with cousin Joan, and we agree that it would be a great pity for you not to go to the wedding. I can have Miss Storm for a day, and if we both work, we can finish the dress. It must be made very simply, and I have some thread lace to trim the waist that will give it just the proper finish, and you have taken such good care of your white sash that it will be quite fit to wear with it.”
“You must take notice of everything at the wedding,” said cousin Joan; “I have n’t been at one myself for years and years, and there ’ll probably be some very fine things at it. I like to hear about pretty dresses sometimes,” and poor cousin Joan turned over a little wearily in her chair.
“Take the dress to my room,” said Mrs. Redmond, “and I will help cousin Joan get to bed.”
When Brenda called on Amy the next day, she was full of apologies for her apparent neglect.
“I know that you ’ll think me a perfect wretch, but I did n’t exactly forget you. Only there were so many things that seemed to happen all at once, and every day I meant to write to you, or to see you,—I really did.”
Brenda was inclined to put the case very strongly, because she knew that she was more than a little in the wrong. It was n’t just the thing to “make everything,” as the girls said, of a friend, and then drop her suddenly. At fifteen, a week in length is like a month to one who is older, and Amy had really felt very forlorn. In consequence, while she accepted Brenda’s apologies, in her manner there was just enough dignity to make Brenda feel a little uncomfortable.
After the first explanations were over, however, both girls were soon deep in all the details of the wedding. Brenda described her dress and Julia’s—they were to be the only bridesmaids—so vividly that Amy could picture them as they should look on that eventful day, from the wreath of white roses that they were to wear to the tips of their bronze shoes. A day or two earlier Amy might have listened with less interest to this glowing description; but now, as she thought of the pineapple silk, she knew that she was pretty sure herself to be one of the gay party. With this expectation, she could naturally take more interest in Brenda’s lively narration.
“You see,” said Brenda, “Agnes wishes me to have as jolly a time as possible out of it, and so I am to have all the girls, Frances and Edith and Belle—you ’ve never met Frances or Belle, and Nora, of course. It’s too bad that Ruth Roberts can’t be here,—she’s a great friend of Julia’s; but they ’ve gone out West, her mother and she, and they won’t be back until the end of September.”
“She must be very sorry to miss it.”
“Oh, yes, indeed; but we ’ll have a large party, and we can have a fine time. I’m sending special invitations to about twenty girls whom I know very well, who are here along the Shore. I’m awfully glad that you are to be one of us; we don’t have a wedding in the family every year, and so we are to make the most of this.”
So Brenda rattled on, and Amy, listening, had only one regret,—she wished that Fritz might have been among the guests, and she felt as if she ought not to take so much pleasure in the prospect, when she and her friend were likely to be thus separated; it would have meant so much to Fritz to have been included in the festivities. But it was natural, she thought, that neither Mrs. Barlow nor Brenda should have invited him. Old Mr. Tomkins, his uncle, led so retired a life, that he was never thought of in the social affairs of his neighbors.
“After all,” said Amy to her mother, “a house without a woman is rather stupid. I don’t wonder that Fritz is always trying to get away.”