"It would be lovely, Phyl; what a dear you are!" said Jessamy. "We'll do everything just as we have planned it now, and write grateful refusals to Aunt Henrietta and dear Mrs. Van Alyn for their offers."
The wedding was to be on the twenty-fourth of September. On the twenty-third the little apartment was a dream of beauty. Phyllis's plan had been successful, the barberries had arrived, great boxes of them, and hung everywhere, graceful, bright, autumnal, yet cheery, full of suggestions of the woods, yet of homely virtues.
They really were rather like Babbie, prickly, pungent, little and slender, bright and cheerful, lighting up the darkest corner wherein they were placed.
As a foil to them, white jasmine filled the rooms with its peculiar perfume, suggestive of Jessamy in more than name with its grace, daintiness, and beauty.
Phyllis stood, tired but satisfied, surveying the completed work of her hands. Nothing was wanting; dear little Babbie and their Jessamy bride were to have as pretty a wedding as love and taste could make it—mere money could do far less than these.
Phyllis's heart was heavy. Both the brides of the morrow had gone with their mother, and Ruth, and Rob's and Tom's sisters, the bridesmaids elect, and little Margery Horton, who had earned the right to be maid of honor, to meet Tom and Rob with their best men at the church to rehearse the ceremony. Phyllis was, of course, a bridesmaid also; but there were so many little last things to attend to at home that she begged off from the rehearsal, promising to learn so well the instructions given her by the others that she would do nothing on the morrow to disgrace her family. The bell rang, and Violet admitted Alan. "I brought a little present," he began, and handed Phyllis two more of the white-wrapped boxes which had been pouring in of late.
"The room looks pretty, doesn't it?" said Phyllis, after she had thanked him for her cousins.
"It is beautiful; but the best of it is the symbolism," said Alan, gravely. "It will be the sort of wedding I like."
"All weddings are dreadful," said Phyllis, out of her increasing loneliness.