“No, he is sitting up with his dressing gown wrapped around him. It is just one of those miserable neuralgic attacks he is subject to, but it completely lays him out, poor fellow. He is so sorry not to come to the wedding. In fact, up to the last minute, he hoped he would be able to control the wretched headache and come anyhow, but he finally had to give up. I gave him a huge dose of aspirin. I really hated to leave him but, of course, I could not be absent from such a post of honor at such a time. The matron of honor is almost as necessary to a bride as the groom himself. But how beautiful you are, my dear Mary Louise! And the girls! They are wonderful. I am almost sorry I am to be in the picture, I want so much to see it.”
Hortense herself was as beautiful as could be. Her dress of the palest grey made over iridescent silk was perfect and her glowing beauty shone in a manner that Elizabeth thought of as being almost diabolical in its lure.
“I am sorry I know what she is,” Elizabeth whispered to Josie. “I can’t enjoy her beauty as I should like to, knowing as I do what a thing she is.”
“Well, keep up a face, anyhow,” admonished Josie. “I am expecting trouble. I hope it won’t go wrong.”
“I promised to telephone Felix just before the ceremony,” said Hortense. “He says he wants to picture us as we go through the yew hedge. He is really quite sentimental about this wedding, dear Mary Louise. You are a prime favorite with him and he thinks great things of your Danny.”
At last the hour struck! It was time for the start. The guests had gathered on the lawn. It was hard for some of them to tear themselves away from the room where the wedding presents were placed. Such wedding presents! Cases of silver of every known pattern and device! Cut glass and fine china! Wonderful rugs and tapestries! Rare etchings and prints! Linen fine enough for a king’s ransom! All of these things were in a little room downstairs that connected Grandpa Jim’s bedroom and the living room. This room Mary Louise had always used as an extra sitting room where she could take her intimates. It had been cleared of furniture for the occasion and tables brought in to hold all the beautiful presents. Some of the more curious guests wanted to linger and read every card and look at the bottom of every piece of silver to see if, by chance, anyone could have sent anything not marked sterling; but when the rumor went forth that the bridal procession was ready to start, the curious ones hastened for the terraces. Hortense telephoned to her husband a moment before they left the house.
“We are ready, dear,” she said in the phone in Mary Louise’s room, “Just starting! You may think of us in five minutes now as being in the midst of the ceremony. I hope your dear head is better. Oh, I am so sorry! Go to bed dear!”
Josie watched every movement of the matron of honor. Nothing escaped the little detective. It was easy to see that Hortense was filled with an excitement that merely being matron of honor did not warrant. Her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks were flushed. Her beauty glowed like a ruby. Occasionally, Josie noticed she stood still for a moment in an attitude of listening. Josie listened too up to the moment the bridal party came through the yew hedge and made its way to the spot on the greensward where the minister awaited. Then for a moment, she forgot everything but the fact that Mary Louise, her dear little friend, was being united to her Danny in the holy bonds of matrimony in sickness and in health until death would them part.
Of course, the servants came out to the side of the house to see their little mistress married. Even the caterers who had begun to swarm in and out of the place left their work and joined the house servants. Mary Louise was a favorite with everybody and this was not the first time those caterers had been called to Colonel Hathaway’s to serve, for the old gentleman was a famous entertainer and many had been the parties given by him to his granddaughter. The great house was empty. Everybody was in the garden thrilled by the beautiful and picturesque sight of the wedding.
As the procession came through the yew hedge a small automobile truck was driven up the alley. It stopped at the Hathaways’ back gate and two men got out, each one with a trunk slung over his back. Quietly they made their way through the deserted kitchen and butler’s pantry and into the small room where the presents were on display. They closed the doors to this room and then with remarkable dispatch proceeded to pack the presents in the trunks filled with excelsior, first the silver which they took from the cases, thereby economizing space, and then the cut glass wrapped in the fine linen and tapestries and packed between the folds of the rugs. Such clever packers were never seen. They seemed to have an instinct for fitting an article in a space. The trunks were filled in a twinkling and then the men carried them out one at a time, and quietly and easily lifted them into the truck. Just as the minister pronounced Danny and Mary Louise man and wife and warned the guests that whom God had united let no man put asunder, the truck started up the alley.