“Love,” she said. “He wanted me to, you see, and I wanted to do as he wanted.”
The absurd arrangement worked well.
The Willoughbys’ taste was irreproachable.
Madge had learned how to dress in Boston, Mass., and possessed an uncanny instinct for anticipating les modes. Crispin’s sartorial opinions were respected in Savile Row. He had, moreover, a genius for organization. Under his direction the ‘production’ of the wedding proceeded like clockwork. An eye to colour made Madge a born decorator, and, where furniture was concerned, while they were yet herded in the showrooms, she could tell the sheep from the goats. David’s half-timbered cottage at Hammercloth Down began to look as it had looked when James the First was young.
Herrick and Eleanor Cloke were admirably served.
As for their patrons, they were tickled to death. Whether sitting as a Court of Appeal or supervising the lovers’ selection of the wherewithal to take the matrimonial field, they called an hilarious tune. Born with large ideas, they indulged them generously. Happily for their protégés, the latter were rich. . . .
If Crispin and Madge made the running, David and Eleanor were well up. An afternoon at the dressmaker’s suited Madge down to the ground, but the lady herself made such a dazzling mannequin that David would not have been human if he had found the hours long. In the same way, Crispin shouldered his burdens with the most infectious good humour, continually reducing Miss Cloke to a condition of mirth which verged upon abandon and throwing shop after shop into sniggering confusion. The climax was reached at the hosier’s, when Willoughby suddenly found himself unable to speak anything but the most imperfect English, enthusiastically supported by an excited flow of French. Indeed, but for his solemn promise never to repeat such simulation, their pilgrimages would have ended that day, for, as Eleanor observed that evening—
“The laws that seem to govern men’s clothes are difficult enough without any international complications.”
Herrick inspired audibly.