She could hear Gwenna's eager, "Oh, Paul! Leslie would so laugh at——" whatever the little incident might be. "I must tell her that!"
Leslie, the bachelor-girl, could imagine the tilt of the young husband's blonde head, and his doubtful, "Don't see why it should be supposed to interest her."
She could imagine the little wife's agreeing, "Oh! Perhaps not."
And again the young husband's, "Don't you think Miss Long gets a little bit much sometimes? Oh, she's all right, but—I mean, I shouldn't like you to go on quite like that."
It would be only after years of marriage that the once-close chum would turn for sympathy to Leslie Long. And then it would not be the same....
The last of Leslie's forebodings seemed the most inevitable. She heard Gwenna's soft Welsh voice, once so full of unexpectedness, now grown almost unrecognisably sedate. She heard it utter that finally "settled-down"-sounding phrase:
"Say 'how d'you do' nicely to Auntie Leslie, now!"
Ah! That seemed to bring a shadow of Autumn already into the summer sunshine of that bridal room with its white, prepared attire, its bonnie, bright-eyed occupant. It seemed to show what must some day come: Taffy middle-aged!
Also what probably would come: Taffy matter-of-fact! Taffy with all the dreams out of her eyes! Taffy whose only preoccupations were, "Really that stair-carpet's getting to look awful; I wonder if I could manage to get a new one and put it on the upper flight?" or, "I never saw anything like the way my children wear through their boots: it was only the other day I got that quite expensive pair of Peter Pans for little Hughie. And now look at them. Look!..."
Yes! This sort of change was wrought, by time and marriage and domesticity, in girl after golden girl. Leslie had seen it. She would probably see Taffy, the fanciful Celt, grown stodgy; Taffy, even Taffy, the compactly supple, with all her fruit-like contours, grown stout!...