The story went on and on, but Sally heard little of it, for her heart was suddenly desolate with need of her own mother. Lucky girls who had mothers to cry for them at their weddings! Her cold fingers gripped David’s comforting, warm hand spasmodically. Somewhere in the world there was a woman who was her mother, a woman who had not waited for the marriage ceremony before succumbing to just such love as that woman’s unwanted daughter now felt for David.
Understanding and pity for that harassed, shame-stricken girl that her mother must have been just sixteen years ago gushed suddenly into Sally’s heart. If David had not been so fine, so tender, so good—she shivered and clung more tightly to his hand. In a few minutes she would be his wife and safe, safe from Mrs. Stone, the orphans’ home, the reformatory.
“I hear Mr. Greer coming in,” Mrs. Greer beamed upon them and bustled from the room. She returned immediately, a plump hand resting affectionately on the shoulder of a tall, thin, stooped old man, whose sweet, bloodless, wrinkled face glowed with a faint radiance of kindliness and benediction.
“This is little Miss Sally Ford and David Nash, Papa,” Mrs. Greer told him. “They’ve been waiting patiently for two hours to get married. I’ve been entertaining them the best I could with some of our very own romances. I often tell Papa we ought to write stories for the magazines—”
“Well, well!” The “marrying parson” rubbed his beautiful, thin hands together and smiled upon Sally and David. “You’re pretty young, aren’t you? But Mama and I believe in youthful marriages. I was nineteen and she was seventeen when we took the big step, and we’ve never regretted it. You have your license, I presume?”
David’s hand shook noticeably as he drew the precious document from his breast pocket and offered it to the minister. Through old fashioned gold-rimmed spectacles the minister studied the paper briefly, his lips twitching slightly with a smile.
“Well, well, Mama,” he glanced over his spectacles at his beaming wife, “everything seems to be in order. Where is Cora? She’s going to enjoy this wedding enormously. The more she enjoys it, the more she weeps,” he explained twinkling at Sally and David. When Mrs. Greer had left the room, the old minister bent his eyes gravely upon David. “Do you know of any real reason why you two children should not be married, my boy?”
David flushed but his eyes and voice were steady as he answered: “No reason at all, sir. We are both orphans, and we love each other.”
Mrs. Greer and her daughter-in-law entered before the old preacher could ask any further questions, but he seemed to be quite satisfied. Taking a much-worn, limp leather black book from his pocket, he summoned the pair to stand before him. Sally tremblingly adjusted the little dark blue felt hat that fitted closely over the masses of her fine black hair, and smoothed the crisp folds of her new blue taffeta dress.
“Join right hands,” the minister directed.