"It is too beautiful!" I whispered to him, folding my arms around his neck.
"And there is a rose for your neck, sweetheart, just the colour of your hair. Isn't he a beauty?"
I held the fragrant, yellow softness to my face, for the tears were coming, and Jane and Amelia stole softly away and left us by ourselves for ten minutes—ten minutes which would alone make the saddest life worth living, and mine was not sad because I had Dimbie.
Presently Jane came back.
"You must go, sir," she commanded, "or your wife will not be ready." And Dimbie went.
Deftly and quickly she arranged my hair, got me into the lovely gown, and fastened the rose at my breast. And while she worked she talked. She made me laugh at her description of the Help, who was sitting dazed and "amoithered" in the middle of the kitchen, drinking the strongest black tea, and regarding every onslaught of Amelia with the utmost indifference and apathy. And Amelia! She, of course, was working like a traction engine in the refreshment-room, shaking her fist at the creams and jellies, some of which refused to stand up, and persuading trails of briony to stick to their proper position on the cake and not wander away to the dishes of oyster pâtés.
"And now you are ready, and you look—well, Dimbie will tell you how you look. I will call him."
"Don't," I said, "he will stay so long, and then you will go to another room to dress, and I do so want to watch you. I shall be awfully particular about your hair."
"You won't suggest a hair-frame?"
"God forbid! You are not the type of woman for a frame. But you drag your hair too much off your temples at times, and although your forehead is low and broad and all that a forehead ought to be, I fancy a few tendrils straying across it would look sweet under your chinchilla toque, and you must humour my fancy, Jane."