"Bang on the low notes and twiddle on the high!" laughed Lloyd, under her breath. "Listen, Mistah Shelby. She's playing the same chord in the bass straight through."
"Is that what makes the fearsome discord?" he asked. "It makes me think of an epitaph I once saw carved on a pretentious headstone in a little village cemetery:
| "'Here lies one |
| Who never let her left hand know |
| What her right hand done.'" |
"Neithah of Laura's hands will evah find out what the othah one is trying to do," whispered Lloyd. "She is supposed to be playing the wedding-march. Hark! There is a familiah note: 'Heah comes the bride.' They must be at the doah. Well, I wish you'd look!"
Every head was turned, for the bridal party was advancing. Slowly down the aisle came M'haley, in the pink chiffon gown from Paris. Mom Beck's quick needle had altered it considerably, for in some unaccountable way the slim bodice fashioned to fit Lloyd's slender figure, now fastened around M'haley's waist without undue strain. The skirt, though turned "hine side befo'," fell as skirts should fall, for the fulness had been shifted to the proper places, and the broad sky-blue sash covered the mended holes in the breadth Lloyd had torn on the stairs.
With her head high, and her armful of flowers held in precisely the same position in which Lloyd had carried hers, she swept down the aisle in such exact imitation of the other maid of honor, that every one who had seen the first wedding was convulsed, and Kitty's whisper about "Lloyd's understudy" was passed with stifled giggles from one to another down both benches.
Ca'line Allison came next, in a white dress and the white slippers that had been thrown after Eugenia's carriage with the rice.
She was flower girl, and carried an elaborate fancy basket filled with field daisies. A wreath of the same snowy blossoms crowned her woolly pate, and an expression of anxiety drew her little black face into a distressed pucker. She had been told that at every third step she must throw a handful of daisies in the path of the on-coming bride, and her effort to keep count and at the same time keep her balance on the high French heels was almost too much for her.
During her many rehearsals M'haley had counted her steps for her: "One, two, three—throw! One, two, three—throw!" She had gone through her part every time without mistake, for her feet were untrammelled then, and her flat yellow soles struck the ground in safety and with rhythmic precision. She could give her entire mind to the graceful scattering of her posies. But now she walked as if she were mounted on stilts, and her way led over thin ice. The knowledge that she must keep her own count was disconcerting, for she could not "count in her haid," as M'haley had ordered her to do. She was obliged to whisper the numbers loud enough for herself to hear. So with her forehead drawn into an anxious pucker, and her lips moving, she started down the aisle whispering, "One, two, three—throw! One, two, three—throw!" Each time, as she reached the word "throw" and grasped a handful of daisies to suit the action to the word, she tilted forward on the high French heels and almost came to a full stop in her effort to regain her balance.
But Ca'line Allison was a plucky little body, accustomed to walking the tops of fences and cooning out on the limbs of high trees, so she reached the altar without mishap. Then with a loud sigh of relief she settled her crown of daisies and rolled her big eyes around to watch the majestic approach of her mother.