I think Miss Dunbar looked lovelier in this déshabille than many a bride in her lace and orange-blossoms. The girl's long golden hair, wet from the bath, hung in rippling confusion about her fresh young face. Two little feet, carelessly thrust into blue morocco slippers, peeped out from amongst the folds of Miss Dunbar's dressing-gown, and one coquettish scarlet heel tapped impatiently upon the floor as the young lady watched that provoking rain.
"What a wretched morning!" she said.
"Well, Miss Laura, it is rather wet," replied Mrs. Madden, in a conciliating tone.
"Rather wet!" echoed Laura, with an air of vexation; "I should think it was rather wet, indeed. It's miserably wet; it's horribly wet. To think that the frost should have lasted very nearly three weeks, and then must needs break up on my wedding morning. Did ever anybody know anything so provoking?"
"Lor', Miss Laura," rejoined the sympathetic Madden, "there's all manner of provoking things allus happenin' in this blessed, wicked, rampagious world of ours; only such young ladies as you don't often come across 'em. Talk of being born with a silver spoon in your mouth, Miss Laura; I do think as you must have come into this mortal spear with a whole service of gold plate. And don't you fret your precious heart, my blessed Miss Laura, if the rain is contrairy. I dare say the clerk of the weather is one of them rampagin' radicals that's allus a goin' on about the bloated aristocracy, and he's done it a purpose to aggeravate you. But what's a little rain more or less to you, Miss Laura, when you've got more carriages to ride in than if you was a princess in a fairy tale, which I think the Princess Baltroubadore, or whatever her hard name was, in the story of Aladdin, must have had no carriage whatever, or she wouldn't have gone walkin' to the baths. Never you mind the rain, Miss Laura."
"But it's a bad omen, isn't it, Elizabeth?" asked Laura Dunbar. "I seem to remember some old rhyme about the bride that the sun shines on, and the bride that the rain rains on."
"Laws, Miss Laura, you don't mean to say as you'd bemean yourself by taking any heed of such low rubbish as that?" exclaimed Mrs. Madden; "why, such stupid rhymes as them are only made for vulgar people that have the banns put up in the parish church. A deal it matters to such as you, Miss Laura, if all the cats and dogs as ever was come down out of the heavens this blessed day."
But though honest-hearted Elizabeth Madden did her best to comfort her young mistress after her own simple fashion, she was not herself altogether satisfied.
The low, brooding sky, the dark and murky atmosphere, and that monotonous rain would have gone far to depress the spirits of the gayest reveller in all the universe.
In spite of ourselves, we are the slaves of atmospheric influences; and we cannot feel very light-hearted or happy upon black wintry days, when the lowering heavens seem to frown upon our hopes; when, in the darkening of the earthly prospect, we fancy that we see a shadowy curtain closing round an unknown future.