“Goodness! You’d think nobody in the world had ever got engaged before,” Miss Hessie Farley said gloomily to Mrs. Farley as they walked away. “Such a fuss—!”
“Oh, yes, he’s nice, but can you imagine feeling sentimental about him?” May asked her friends.
Poor Aunt Priscilla said it was exactly like Willie and her all over again, and offered her grandmother’s lace wedding-veil. But she couldn’t find it anywhere, until—pop!—while she was screaming, “Work, for the night is coming,” in Sunday school, she remembered that she had put it over some plates of caramels up in the attic to keep off the flies. She had made them for a surprise for Willie, that’s why she’d hidden them up there; and then, of course, she’d forgotten them. She was so afraid she’d forget again that she kept saying, “Caramels—caramels,” to herself all through the psalms, all through the sermon.
“Hear my prayer, O Lord: (caramels) and let my crying come unto thee.
“Hide not thy (caramels) face from me in the time of my trouble: incline thine ear unto me when I call; (caramels, caramels, caramels).”
They had been there nearly a year, so they probably wouldn’t be very good. Still, it wouldn’t hurt just to try them.
The mice had tried them, and tried the veil, too. But May, who was clever with her needle, mended it so that you wouldn’t have known.
Victor was pleased with the engagement because he thought now he could ride Edward’s bicycle.
“Margaret drove over to announce the forthcoming nuptials,” Cousin Lizzie said to Cousin Sam. “That means a silver tea-set. Really, the woman’s ridiculous! They haven’t a penny between them, and she was clucking like old Speckle when she’s laid an egg!”
Mamma had tried to make Maggie and Edward drive to the Blows with her, but they escaped to the autumn garden. He was trying to learn the names of the flowers because she loved them so.
“Chrysanthemum, Edward.”
“Chrysanthemum. What’s this brown one?”
“Chrysanthemum, too. Zinnia.”
“Zinnia. Oh, Maggie, you beautiful girl!”
Her heart cried, “Oh, darling, darling, darling, say it again!” But aloud she said scornfully:
“You must enjoy hearing yourself talk!”
“And what’s this?”
“A zinnia, just the same as it was two minutes ago.”
And they looked at each other laughing, shining with inward light. They were always laughing—laughter charged with excitement, laughter that left them trembling.
“What’s the joke, children?”
“Nothing, Mamma, really and truly there isn’t any joke.”
And there wasn’t, but Mamma could never believe it, and her feelings were dreadfully hurt. But they couldn’t stop. Sitting in church, going to supper at the Blows, they didn’t dare look at each other, because they were bursting to laugh.
He laughed at her, and she loved it, even when he laughed at things she meant perfectly seriously. Because he never laughed at the wrong things. He understood so wonderfully that sometimes she thought she was dying of happiness. When she told him, shy, even with him, the things other people would have waited for her to finish—the word, the broken sentence—the tears came into her eyes as he answered, “I know, my darling.”
Even when they fought, when they were furious at each other, they felt as if sparkles and flames were running over them, leaping towards each other.
Lily couldn’t understand it at all. She thought when people were engaged they exchanged locks of hair and held each other’s hands. Two pale pink hearts tied together with a pale blue ribbon. How could Edward and Maggie talk to each other the way they did?
“It’s tremendously stimulating,” Edward explained.
“Edward makes me so mad!” added Maggie. They smiled at each other, and again the invisible lightning leapt.
“You mustn’t be so selfish, children,” Mamma reproved them. “You mustn’t grumble so when people ask you out. It’s very kind of them.”
So they went to evening parties; and Mamma, beaming, handed Edward around like a plate of delicious cake.
“Mrs. Holly, this is Mr. Post! Cousin Jennie, I want you to know Edward—”
And Maggie, in her flounced and frilled white ball gown with a bodice like a black satin corset, was saying:
“Thank you—thank you ever so much. Yes, isn’t he? We don’t know yet. Thank you, Cousin Jennie. Yes, indeed, I am. Oh, not for ever so long.”
“Maggie, hurry up! Stop talking and come!” And his voice sounded quite desperate. Oh, together again! “The Blue Danube”—how sad, how sweet! Was she going to disgrace herself by crying at a party?
“Edward—”
“Yes, darling, I know.”
But sometimes, when he talked to Cousin Sam and Uncle Willie about fishing and shooting, he looked so interested, so absorbed, that she thought, “This is his real life; this is what really interests him.” Sadness and loneliness covered her, darkening the light. And then to find that he had suffered as much as she all those hours, those years, when they were not alone together!
One Sunday in spring a late snow fell, light and wet, so that everything was deep in swansdown. The scillas were already in bloom, and she cleared the snow from them to show him, while the flakes still sifted from the grey sky, melting on their cheeks.
He hardly looked at them, but why did the patch of blue flowers in the white snow make her so happy? And why did old Mrs. Latter suddenly pop into her head—old Mrs. Latter, who had been dead for years? She hadn’t thought of her since the day Mamma took her there when she was a little bit of a girl—how long ago? But now she saw the wrinkled, white cheeks like crumpled tissue-paper, with their big spots of moth-wing brown; smelled cologne—
What was it? She must remember—she mustn’t lose it. It was something that mattered tremendously to Edward and to her.
And just as she gave up, came the feeling of soft little hands
