Mrs. Reist laid her hands on the shoulders of the faithful hired girl. “Never mind, Millie, you’ll have your chest! We’ll go to Lancaster and buy what you want. Amos got his share of our mother’s things when we divided them and he has a big chest on the garret all filled with homespun linen and quilts and things that you can use. That will all be yours.”
“Mine? I can’t hardly believe it. You couldn’t be nicer to me if you was my own mom. And I ain’t forgettin’ it neither! I said to Amos we won’t get married till after Amanda and when you and Phil are all fixed in your new house. Then we’ll go to the preacher and get it done. We don’t want no fuss, just so we get married, that’s all we want. It needn’t be done fancy.”
CHAPTER XXVI
“One Heart Made o’ Two”
Amanda married Martin that May, when the cherry blossoms transformed the orchard into a sea of white.
To the rear of the farmhouse stood a plot of ground planted with cherry trees. Low grass under the trees and little paths worn into it led like aisles up and down. There, near the centre of the plot, Amanda and Martin chose the place for the ceremony. The march to and from that spot would lead through a white-arched aisle sweet with the breath of thousands of cherry blossoms.
Amanda selected for her wedding a dress of white silk. “I do want a wedding dress I can pack away in an old box on the attic and keep for fifty years and take out and look at when it’s yellow and old,” she said, romance still burning in her heart.
“Uh,” said practical Millie. “Why, there ain’t no attic in that house you’re goin’ to! Them bungalows ain’t the kind I like. I like a real house.”
“Well, there’s no garret like ours, but there is a little raftered room with a slanting ceiling and little windows and I intend to put trunks and boxes in it and take my spinning-wheel that Granny gave me and put it there.”