But the deceitful, double-dealing young spendthrift never had bud or blossom charged to his host, but paid cash for all the flowers, thus making a deep hole in his savings of three years.
The day was spent in making the small final preparations for the wedding.
At noon the flowers came, fresh and blooming and fragrant, because just taken from their stalks. Besides the bouquets, there were—according to orders—“loads and loads and loads” of flowers to decorate the drawing room and the supper table.
The girls carefully laid away the bouquets, and went to work to decorate the rooms.
In the sliding doors between the front and rear drawing rooms they made an arch with festoons of orange blossoms, and from the middle of the arch hung a beautiful wedding bell of orange flowers. Under this they meant that the marriage ceremony should be performed. They meant to have everything their own way, or, to tell the literal truth, Wynnette meant to have everything her way, and to have every girl back her in that determination.
The arch finished, they decorated every available part of the room with flowers, until the place looked less like an apartment in a dwelling house than a bower in fairyland.
When their labor of love was completed the girls joined the family at an early dinner.
And when this was over they flew away to dress for the evening.
Still Wynnette had everything her own way. It was she who had decided that the six girls from the country should be enlisted as extra bridesmaids, “because,” she said, “it will please them, and give them something pleasant to talk about for a long time to come.”
She had said to her mother: