On the first of November, one of the short-lived Indian Summer days, the farmhouse on Mount Hunger literally blossomed like a rose.
A week beforehand there had been an animated discussion as to what should be the wedding decorations of the "long-room." Hazel, who had been with them a week already, settled it.
"As if there could be any choice!" she exclaimed. "It's been great fun to hear you all suggesting this, that, and the other, from ground hemlock and bitter-sweet, to everlasting! But Jack and I settled it three weeks ago--how could there be anything for Rose, but roses? Anyway, that's what Jack wrote, and our florist looked fairly dazed when I gave him the order--just bushels of them, Rose-pose, lovely La France ones, like those you threw into the--No, I won't tease you, Cousin mine," she said, with a merry laugh, as Rose looked at her appealingly.
And now, on the wedding morning of the first of November, the great box that Chi had brought up from Barton's the night before was opened, and in Hazel's skilful fingers the exquisite pink blooms lent to the "long-room" a wonderful grace and beauty.
She was flitting about in her pale pink cashmere dress--"Made specially to match the roses," she said to March, as she dropped him a curtsy preparatory to pinning a rose into his buttonhole. "We must all wear Rose-pose's badge to-day. Where are you, Budd?"
"Here," said her knight, promptly appearing with Cherry from the pantry, where they had been counting the frosting-roses on the wedding-cake. He looked down at the slender fingers as they pulled the stem of the pink bud through the buttonhole of his jacket, and thought--of the ring! Then he looked up at the tall, beautiful girl bending over him, and, somehow, the day of his proposal seemed very far away in the Past. Hazel was so grown up!--as tall as Rose. Still, he was n't going to be afraid, if she was grown up. Now was his time;--and "Ethan Allan" always made the most of his opportunities. Budd was in United States History, this term, and he knew this for a fact.
He drew forth from his breeches' pocket a something that might once have been white, but, at present, looked more like a shoe-rag, it was so dingy and soiled.
"I 've kept it, you see, Hazel," he said, his small mouth puckering, his round, light-blue eyes growing rounder, as he looked up at Hazel, with twelve-year-old earnestness.
"Kept what?" said Hazel, mystified, and holding up the offering gingerly between thumb and forefinger to examine it.
"Why, don't you know?--the glove you gave me when you said you 'd be my Lady-love? don't you remember,--in the barn?" answered Budd, slightly crestfallen.