Anna Belle was looking up at Henry, waiting for him to put into words the gratitude and happiness that filled their hearts. But the gift of the ready tongue was not Henry's. How could a man find words to thank a mother for giving him her daughter? How poor and mean were all the customary phrases of appreciation to be offered for such a gift! But while he hesitated, his eyes met the eyes of Anna Belle's mother, and with a quick impulse of the heart, his tongue was loosed to the utterance of one word that made all other words superfluous.
"Mother!" he said; and as their hands met, Anna Belle's arms were around her neck, and Anna Belle's voice was whispering in her ear: "You are the very best mother in all the world." Yet in that moment of supreme happiness for the lovers, Margaret Williams realized what she was giving up, and tasted the bitterness and the sweetness of the cup of self-abnegation that her own hands had prepared. The hot tears of anguish smarted in her eyes. But the tears did not fall, and the emotion passed as swiftly as it had come. She straightened herself in her chair and pushed Anna Belle gently away.
"It seems to me we're makin' a great fuss over a mighty little matter," she said carelessly. "I'd have been a poor sort o' mother to stand in the way of my own child's happiness, and it wouldn't suit me at all to be a millstone or a stumblin'-block. That's all there is to it. Now, go out on the front porch, you two, and set your weddin' day."
It was the afternoon of the wedding day, and the two mothers were sitting on the porch of their joint home, both in festal attire, and both in the state of pleasurable excitement that follows any great change, and that precludes an immediate return to the commonplace routine of daily life.
"I might just as well be sewin' or mendin'," said Mrs. Williams, "but it seems like Sunday or Christmas day, and I don't feel like settlin' down to anything."
"There's nothing like a weddin' for makin' you feel unsettled," said Mrs. Martin, as she smoothed down her black silk dress. "It'll be a long time before we get over this day."
"It was a pretty weddin', wasn't it?" said Mrs. Williams, "And I never saw a happier lookin' couple than Anna Belle and Henry. Most brides and grooms look more like scared rabbits than anything else, but Anna Belle and Henry were so happy they actually forgot to be scared. I reckon they think that married life's a smooth, straight road with flowers on both sides, just like that garden path. You and me have been over it, and we know better."
"They'll have their trials," smiled Mrs. Martin, "but if they love each other, they can stand whatever comes."
"Yes," agreed Mrs. Williams, "love's like a rubber tire; it softens the jolts and carries you easy over the rough places in the road."