"And look here," she said, pointing him to a stand which displayed a show of needle-books and pincushions, and small matters of that kind, "just look here—even the little girls of my sewing-class must give me something. That needle-book, little Lottie Price made. Where she got the silk I don't know, but it's quite touching. See how nicely she's done it! It makes me almost cry to have poor people want to make me presents."
"Why should we deny them that pleasure—the greatest and purest in the world?" said St. John. "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
"Well, then, Arthur, I'll tell you what I was thinking of. I wouldn't dare tell it to anybody else, for they'd think perhaps I was making believe to be better than I was; but I was thinking it would make my wedding brighter to give gifts to poor, desolate people who really need them than to have all this heaped upon me."
Then Arthur told her how, in some distant ages of faith and simplicity, Christian weddings were always celebrated by gifts to the poor.
"Now, for example," said Angie, "that poor, little, pale dress-maker that Aunt Maria found for me,—she has worked day and night over my things, and I can't help wanting to do something to brighten her up. She has nothing but hard work and no holidays; no lover to come and give her pretty things, and take her to Europe; and then she has a sick mother to take care of—only think. Now, she told me, one day, she was trying to save enough to get a sewing-machine."
"Very well," said Arthur, "if you want to give her one, we'll go and look one out to-morrow and send it to her, with a card for the ceremony, so there will be one glad heart."
"Arthur, you—"
But what Angie said to Arthur, and how she rewarded him, belongs to the literature of Eden—it cannot be exactly translated.
Then they conferred about different poor families, whose wants and troubles and sorrows were known to those two, and a wedding gift was devised to be sent to each of them; and there are people who may believe that the devising and executing of these last deeds of love gave Angie and St. John more pleasure than all the silver and jewelry in the wedding bazar.
"I have reserved a place for our Sunday-school to be present at the ceremony," said Arthur; "and there is to be a nice little collation laid for them in my study; and we must go in there a few minutes after the ceremony, and show ourselves to them, and bid them good-by before we go to your mother's."