“Don't you think he is a nice man?” asked Eddy, looking sharply at her.
“Yes, dear, I think so. I don't know anything to the contrary.”
“Don't you think he is handsome?”
Suddenly Charlotte saw Anderson's face in her thoughts for the first time very plainly. “Yes,” she said, “of course. Let us go in the other room, Eddy, and see if Amy doesn't want anything.” She led Eddy forcibly into the parlor.
“It is so late, I am afraid he won't come,” the little boy said, disappointedly, when the clock on the mantel struck eleven just as they entered.
It was not long after that when the company began to disperse. The bride and groom were to take a midnight-train, and the bride and her sister stole away up-stairs for the changing of the bridal for the travelling costume.
Charlotte unfastened her sister's wedding-gown, and she was striving her best to keep the tears back. Ina, on the contrary, was gayer than usual.
“It is very odd,” said she, as Charlotte hooked the collar of her gray travelling-gown, “how a girl looks forward to getting married, all her life, and thinks more of it than anything else, and how, after all, it is nothing at all. You can remember that I said so, Charlotte, when you come to get married. You needn't dread it as if it were some tremendous undertaking. It isn't, you know.”
“You speak exactly as if you had died, and were telling me not to dread dying,” said Charlotte. She laughed, and the laugh was almost a sob.
“What an idea!” cried Ina, laughing. “Of course I am very sad at leaving home and you all, you darling, but the getting married is not so much, after all. You will find that I am right.”