“Don’t let me give you ‘nerves,’ Mrs. Lee. I know I do lack sequence, and that, to the life companion of a professor of literature, must be very trying. I can begin things wonderfully and I know the ending I want; but I can’t fill in the middle part. The middle is just dots and dashes.”
“Principally dashes,” Mrs. Lee smiled.
“Principally. This time, though, there is a connection. To-day is to be my Wonderful Day. So, if life really is beautifully arranged I must find it out before to-morrow. And even a forty-eight hour day is hardly long enough for one’s only Wonderful Day.”
“Oh, youth, youth! With all life before it, it must still invent limits for itself and tragic ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and ‘perhapses.’ Why must to-day alone be wonderful? Every day has its wonders.”
There was no answer for a moment; then Rosamond leaned over and kissed the elder woman’s cheek—a fragile bit of pale pink and ivory modelling, faintly impressed with many tiny lines. She knew that she could not uncover to Mrs. Lee’s eyes all the remote reasons for her mood of this morning. She who had worn her weeds in loving sorrow and resignation must not be told of the young heart beating its rebellious tattoo for long irksome months, under crape and plain black, black and white, and lavender with black trimmings—nor of the hoydenish kick which had cast the last stage of woe from her forever.
It seemed to Rosamond, then, that the cynic touch of disillusionment, and not the mere passing of time, was what aged; and that, according to such calculation, she was years older than Mrs. Lee. Twenty-four’s responsibility was to guard the couleur de rose for Seventy! Her thoughts culminated in the inward exclamation:
“It makes a difference, even in one’s age, what sort of a man one marries!”
Aloud, she said:
“You see, I called this my ‘Wonderful Day,’ and put on this frock to celebrate it. So I must make it wonderful, mustn’t I?”
“Yes, indeed, my dear, and all the midsummer fairies will help you,” her friend answered.