"I wouldn't risk it. But what can I have?"
"For my wedding," John announced, "you'll have nothing, unless you want to sit alone in the garden in your new clothes. You're not going to be present at the ceremony. Good Lord! I'll have Rupert and Daniel for witnesses, and we'll come home in time to do the milking, but there'll be no show. It would make me sick."
"Not even a party?"
"What the—what on earth should we have a party for?"
"For fun, of course. Daniel and Zebedee and us." She leaned towards him. "And George, John, just to show that all's forgiven!" To see if she had dared too much, she cast a glance at Mildred Caniper, but that lady sat in the stillness of determined indifference.
"Not one of you!" John said. "It's our wedding, and we're going to do what we like with it."
"But when you're going to be happy—as I suppose you think you are—you ought to let other people join in. Here's a chance of a little fun—"
"There's nothing funny about being married," Helen said in her deep tones.
"Depends who—whom—you're marrying, doesn't it?" Miriam asked, and looking at Mildred Caniper once more, she found that she need not be afraid, for though the expression was the same, its effect was different. Notya looked as though she could not rouse her energies to active disapproval; as though she would never say her rare, amusing things again, and Miriam was reminded of the turnip lanterns they had made in their youth—hollowness and flickering light within.
The succeeding days encouraged that reminder, for something had gone from Mildred Caniper and left her stubbornly frail in mind and body. Rupert believed that hope had died in her but the Canipers did not speak of the change which was plain to all of them. She was a presence of flesh and blood, and she would always be a presence, for she had that power, but she approached Mr. Pinderwell in their thoughts, and they began to use towards her the kind of tenderness they felt for him. Sometimes she became aware of it and let out an irony with a sharpness which sent Helen about the house more gaily and persuaded her that Notya would be better when summer came, for surely no one could resist the sun.