What did Mother mean?...
But oh, rapture!
Tess and Missy wrote the invitations themselves and decided to deliver them in person, and Missy had no more prevision of all that decision meant than Juliet had when her mother concluded she would give the ball that Romeo butted in on.
Tess said they must do it with empressement, meaning she would furnish an equipage for them to make their rounds in. Her father was a doctor, and had turned the old Smith place into a sanitarium; and, to use the Cherryvale word, he had several “rigs.” However, when the eventful day for delivery arrived, Tess discovered that her father had disappeared with the buggy while her mother had “ordered out” the surrey to take some ladies to a meeting of the Missionary Society.
That left only an anomalous vehicle, built somewhat on the lines of a victoria, in which Tim, “the coachman” (in Cherryvale argot known as “the hired man”), was wont to take convalescent patients for an airing. Tess realized the possible lack of dignity attendant upon having to sit in the driver's elevated seat; but she had no choice, and consoled herself by terming it “the box.”
A more serious difficulty presented itself in the matter of suitable steeds. One would have preferred a tandem of bright bays or, failing these, spirited ponies chafing at the bit and impatiently tossing their long, waving manes. But one could hardly call old Ben a steed at all, and he proved the only animal available that afternoon. Ben suffered from a disability of his right rear leg which caused him to raise his right haunch spasmodically when moving. The effect was rhythmic but grotesque, much as if Ben thought he was turkey-trotting. Otherwise, too, Ben was unlovely. His feet were by no means dainty, his coat was a dirty looking dappled-white, and his mane so attenuated it needed a toupee. As if appreciating his defects, Ben wore an apologetic, almost timid, expression of countenance, which greatly belied his true stubbornness of character.
Not yet aware of the turn-out they must put up with, about two o'clock that afternoon Missy set out for Tess's house. She departed unobtrusively by the back door and side gate. The reason for this almost surreptitious leave-taking was in the package she carried under her arm. It held her mother's best black silk skirt, which boasted a “sweep”; a white waist of Aunt Nettie's; a piece of Chantilly lace which had once been draped on mother's skirt but was destined, to-day, to become a “mantilla”; and a magnificent “willow plume” snipped from Aunt Nettie's Sunday hat. This plume, when tacked to Missy's broad leghorn, was intended to be figuratively as well as literally the crowning feature of her costume.
Tess, too, had made the most of her mother's absence at the Missionary Society. Unfortunately Mrs. O'Neill had worn her black silk skirt, but her blue dimity likewise boasted a “sweep.” A bouquet of artificial poppies (plucked from a hat of “the mater's”) added a touch of colour to Tess's corsage. And she, also, had acquired a “willow plume.”
Of course it was Tess who had thought to provide burnt matches and an extra poppy—artificial. The purpose of the former was to give a “shadowy look” under the eyes; of the latter, moistened, to lend a “rosy flush” to cheek and lip.
Missy was at first averse to these unfamiliar aids to beauty.