"There's no finer boy breathes than Albert."
"You're right."
"He's sending you lilies-of-the-valley, baby. He's ordered himself some white-flannel tennis pants, too—the kind you admired. He got his report from the life-insurance people and he's a grand risk, Lilly. In as fine a condition to marry as a man could be. Baby, tell me—tell papa—aren't you happy?"
"I am—I—oh, I am, dear! Why, here is Elsa ready to dress my hair!
Mamma—dear—I'm all right now. Fine."
* * * * *
At eight o'clock that evening, in the Garrison Avenue Rock Church, little Evelyn Kemble, in the bushiest of white skirts and to the accompaniment of organ music rolling over her, placed a white-satin cushion before the smilax-banked altar.
Kneeling on it, and to the antiphonal beat of the Reverend Stickney's voice, Lilly Becker and Albert Penny became as one.
CHAPTER XI
By a strange conspiracy of middle-class morality, which clothes the white nude of life in suggestive factory-made garments, and by her own sheer sappiness, which vitalized her, but with the sexlessness of a young tree, Lilly, with all her rather puerile innocence left her, walked into her marriage like a blind Nydia, hands out and groping sensitively.
The same, in a measure, was true of Albert, who came into his immaculate inheritance, himself immaculate, but with a nervous system well insulated by a great cautiousness of life.