However, at one time in the ceremonial there was danger of a laugh from the aggregate, overwrought nerves when Charlotte promptly named herself without waiting for Nell's response which came late but in time to save embarrassment.
Then it was all over and the whole congregation trooped but into the sunshine. Father walked home with young Nickols on one side and Charlotte on the other, Martha carrying the Suckling and walking beside Harriet, who led Sue past the destruction of her white dress which every mud puddle threatened. Cliff Gray came with me slowly up the street after all the others had gone ahead and most of them had turned into the gates of their respective homes.
"Is everything all right now, Cliff?" I questioned him, as we walked slowly under the old elms of our ancestors' planting. "It is all right now?" I asked again, while Cliff looked off into the distance.
"I have faith that I can make it that way now, Charlotte dear," he answered, as I paused to turn in at my gate. We clasped hands for a second and then he went on down the street toward the Cockrell gate; and Letitia's material point of view on existence I knew would have a fair chance at his hands.
I felt that I had never loved my friends as I did that wonderful Sunday, and I hoped it would not bore them if I at times let some of it overflow into their well ordered lives.
The rest of that long, hazy, dreamy, wonder day, in the morning of which our hearts had been poured so full, we all of us spent with father, as he was to leave us the next morning. Against the remonstrance of his maternal parent, the worthless Jefferson had been chosen to go along in the place of his father Dabney. The young negro's brisk packings filled the house with a joy note that was delightful and Mammy admonished him on subjects moral every time he came near the kitchen.
Late in the afternoon I left father down in the garden with young Nickols, to whom he was confiding the care of some very choice hollyhock seeds that would need gathering in the next few weeks.
"Your father got them from England," the judge said gravely, as he showed the small paddies how to roll out the thin seed without crushing them.
"Have I got any father but the Lady?" asked the youngster with all seriousness, as he beamed up in my direction. Suddenly Martha turned and went indoors and up to her room. I followed her and sat down beside the bed on which she had flung herself.
"You'll have to make him understand it all; I can't," she said, after I had tenderly hushed her weeping. "I give him to you. I—I won't be with him long." As she spoke I noticed how the light shone through her pale fingers as she held them up to clasp mine.