“I think,” she said critically, backing away from Jenny and looking fixedly at her plain little face and straight, blonde, bobbed hair—“I think—a poke bonnet. Yes, Jane! A pink poke bonnet—very pale. You’re right, Cicily, she must be quaint! A hooped skirt, Isabel, a pink hooped skirt, with little garlands around it and a sweet, tight little bodice. Pale pink taffeta, don’t you think, Muriel? And a little 1860 bouquet with ribbon streamers and a white lace frill. Oh, Jenny, my dear, you’ll be charming! We’ll emphasize your angles. You’ll look like a cross-stitched design on a sampler! How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” said Jenny meekly.
“You don’t look it,” said Flora. “Do you think, Jane, that pantalettes would be going too far?”
Jane thought they would.
“I suppose you’re right,” said Flora, “though I always think a wedding should be primarily a pageant. This one will be lovely. The hot weather will bring out all the roses. What are you wearing, Jane?”
“What does the mother of the bride always wear?” said Jane ironically. “Beige chiffon, of course. I didn’t think I had any choice.”
“And Isabel, too?” said Flora critically.
“Well, no. Now that I think of it, Isabel is a mother of a bride and she’s wearing grey.”
“Muriel’s dress is lovely,” said Flora. “I’m making her hat. Mauve. Let me make yours, Jane. For Heaven’s sake, get a good one, for once!”
“All right,” said Jane indifferently. “I’d be glad not to have to bother about it.”
“We’ve got to go,” said Cicily. “We’re going down to Crichton’s with Aunt Isabel to pick out my tea-set.”
“I chose Belle’s yesterday,” said Muriel as she rose.
“It’s lovely,” said Isabel. “It seems just a moment ago that you were choosing your own.”
“I know,” said Muriel. “And Flora and Jane were trying on those blue bridesmaids’ dresses. They were pretty.”
Jane thought of Flora’s blue bridesmaid’s dress lying crumpled on her bedroom chair the morning after her mother’s death. She thought of herself hanging it up in Flora’s closet, while Flora dressed in the little black frock that Mrs. Lester had brought over. She wondered if Flora were thinking of it, too. But Flora’s face was very tranquil.
“Fittings for all of you, Wednesday morning,” she said. “I’ll have a beige model here, Jane, for you to look at.”
They all went out of the brownstone stable and stood for a moment in the old carriage court. The Furnesses’ back yard looked just as it always had. Flora had the playhouse painted every year. But the houses across Rush Street had all been rented to business firms. Dressmakers and milliners and decorators had signs over every door. The clean frilled lace curtains and evenly drawn shades in Flora’s Victorian mansion seemed strangely out of place in their commercial environment. They recalled a vanished era. Flora’s lace curtains looked just like her mother’s—just as clean and just as frilly and just as Victorian. She kept the old place up beautifully. She even kept the orange tree blooming in the conservatory. But if she were going to live in Paris—
Jane sighed. It did not seem to her just a moment ago that she had tried on Muriel’s blue bridesmaid’s dress.
VI
Jane stood at Isabel’s side in the front row of the little congregation that had gathered in the rose garden. On her other hand, pressed close against the tightly drawn white satin ribbon, stood little Steve. Little Steve, at fourteen, was taller than his mother and looked exactly like his father. He was wearing his first long white flannel trousers, and Jane knew that he considered the occasion of the double wedding mainly important as his début into man’s estate. Behind Jane stood Mr. and Mrs. Ward and Alden Carver, the only representative of the Carver family who had come West for the wedding. Mr. and Mrs. Carver no longer cared to undertake transcontinental travel. They were both over seventy. Silly had stayed at Gull Rocks to look after them.
Across the grassy aisle, Muriel, radiant under the new mauve hat, rested one graceful mauve arm on the back of Mrs. Lester’s wheelchair. Rosalie and Edith, once more imported from Cleveland for a family festival, supported their mother on the other side. Mrs. Lester, herself, colossal in shiny black taffeta, blinked like a wrinkled sibyl in the brilliant June sunshine. There was something a little sinister about her massive, motionless figure. Her aged face, under her mantilla cap of black lace, looked like a mask of tan wax. The wrinkles, the salient nose, the cascade of double chins might have been a clever sculptor’s effigy of old age. Only the eyelids moved. Her bright dark eyes glittered behind them with a gleam of helpless intelligence that seemed imprisoned in the motionless mask. Mrs. Lester had deplored these marriages.
Behind the two families the garden was filled with guests. The orchestra beyond the clump of evergreens had just slipped from the riotous strains of “Tipperary” into the first sentimental notes of the Barcarolle from the Tales of Hoffmann. Muriel had requested it. It had been played at her wedding. Jane and Isabel had thought that the less this wedding was like Muriel’s the better. Nevertheless, they had conceded the Barcarolle.
Jane stood motionless,
