The calmness that came into my frightened heart was like the peace of a deep sleep, and with its strength I faced the day that was to be that of my humiliation and which was to be the crest of the wave of the high tide of Goodloets.
CHAPTER XVI
THE JEWEL IN THE MATRIX
When I awoke from a few hours of deep and exhausted sleep I found my room fast filling with the strenuosities of the day. In fact, I opened them upon Harriet Henderson, up, dressed and briskly doing. She had a large pasteboard box with her and the minute I brushed repose from my eyes she opened it and held up for my inspection a very short tulle garment besprinkled with tiny silk rosebuds, along with a bonnet and other wee but distinctly feminine paraphernalia to match. A basket adorned with a huge bow of tulle came from another box and I was forced to voice my admiration with the greatest vigor.
"How I'll ever keep from eating Sue up before she gets to the altar, I can't see," said Harriet, as she held the wee frock for a second against her breast. It hurts me to the quick of my own breast to see Harriet's eyes when she broods over Sue. I don't see how she is going to live life always as hungry as she is now.
"I suppose I might just as well wear my tennis things, because the guests will be already as completely enraptured as is humanly possible before my entry upon the scene of action of my own wedding," I said, as I sat up and took the small bonnet in my own hand. "It is too bad that Jessie and Letitia should worry themselves over my own wedding frock, if Susan is—" I was just saying when Nell arrived beside my bed with the Suckling in the very act of obtaining her early luncheon from the maternal fount. The nurse has always had to follow Nell about with her successive hungry offspring.
"Girls, I really don't know what to do, but young Charlotte has given every single presentable garment that Jimmy possessed to different unclothed children in the Settlement, who were needed in the pageant, and Mark and Billy are laughing at her, while Jimmy is howling. I just ran in to see Harriet a minute and ask her if she—"
"Yes, Jimmie's wedding garments came home from Mrs. Burns' yesterday and I'll lend them to you just to spite those men, who are simply ruining Charlotte by the day," said Harriet, as Nell handed her the replete Suckling wrong end foremost and picked up the small tulle bonnet with a gurgle of maternal rapture that was in some ways as young as the happy gurgle that the Suckling gave as she settled into Harriet's dependable arms for her morning nap. Harriet cradled her against her own round, firm breast and for a second brooded then joined in Nell's rapture over the garments for the bedizening of wee Susan.