"Hoots! not much, not much. It will jist be the April wind—and the doctor would be giving me a fine liniment last time. Oh, it is the fine young man he will be, indeed. And you would be out for a drive with him?" he added, in kindly interest.
"Yes, uncle." Her face flushed, and she moved toward the door leading to the stairs. "Yes, I was out for a little drive with Dr. Allen." She passed out, and closing the door behind her, added softly to herself, "For the last time."
CHAPTER XV
THE ELOPEMENT
For Law immutable hath one decree,
"No deed of good, no deed of ill can die;
All must ascend unto my loom and be
Woven for man in lasting tapestry."
—ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD.
In the middle of May Miss Arabella's wedding gown was completed, and presented a blue cascade of frills and flounces that delighted the owner's beauty-loving soul. Just once had she tried it on, and then only in sections, for Mrs. Munn said it was dreadful bad luck to wear your wedding gown before the day. So at one time Miss Arabella had put on the billowy skirt with her lilac waist; and at another the blue silk blouse with her old gingham skirt, and even then she had been seized with such a fit of trembling that Elsie Cameron had to hold her up.
The dressmaking had been carried on in a large empty room above the doctor's surgery, and when it was finished Miss Arabella left the gown there. She dared not take it home, for fear Susan would discover it. So Mrs. Munn wrapped it carefully in a sheet and hung it behind the door. There were bunches of dried sage and mint and lavender hanging along the low rafters above it, and just to move the wedding dress gave one a whiff as sweet as a breath from all the spices of Araby.
Often, when Dr. Allen drove away, Miss Arabella would run over to Mrs. Munn's, and up the back stairs, for a look at the gown, just to convince herself that it had not been merely a beautiful dream. It was something tangible, the outward and visible sign that her happiness was real. For hours afterward she would go about her work in a kind of blissful daze, until Susan declared it was a caution how Arabella forgot things, and she wondered what on earth was the matter with her. She looked well enough, but sometimes her appetite was bad, and she, Susan, had a good mind to take her over to Dr. Allen, and see if he couldn't cure her up in a day, the way he did last fall.
Arabella had another mysterious source of forgetfulness. When Susan's watchfulness kept her from visiting Mrs. Munn's lumber room, she would slip away into her spare bedroom, shut the door, and taking out two letters from her top drawer, would sit down and read them again and again. The last letter was always convincing; it breathed Martin's strong, joyous spirit from every line, and drove away all fears. It had come promptly in answer to hers, and had been sent under cover to Mrs. Munn, for fear Ella Anne's curiosity might again be aroused.