But here the General interfered.
“No, no! No breakfast!” he cried. “None the less grateful to you, madam, but fuss and speechifying don’t come naturally to a man of my age. I want to get my wife to myself as soon as possible, so we’ll make a bolt of it from the church door. Capital plan, though, to stay with you for a bit before. What? You’d like that, Alice, wouldn’t you? Need someone to fix your fal-lals. What? Another debt of gratitude, madam, which we will hope to repay, God willing, when we settle down in our new home.”
Miss Beveridge gratefully accepted Nan’s invitation, but when she went a step further and offered to assist in the choice of the wedding-dress, it appeared that the bridegroom had decided views of his own on the subject, and had already made his selection.
“She must wear blue! Says it ought to be grey at her age! Her age, indeed, as if she were an elderly woman! She was wearing blue when I saw her first, and she’s going to be married in blue, or I’ll know the reason why! Blue dress, and a hat with blue feathers; and those Trevor lassies shall be bridesmaids. Must have bridesmaids, however quiet it is. What? Besides, I owe them something, and it will be an excuse to give them their kit—white muslin and blue ribbons. That’s how young girls used to dress when I was a lad, and I’ve never seen anything to touch it. There will be no trouble about the dresses, madam. I’ve decided all that. You just tell me the name of a dressmaker—a tip-top dressmaker, mind you—and we’ll send in the order at once.”
The bride-elect turned to her friend with a somewhat horrified expression, but Nan flashed a reassuring smile, and adroitly turned the subject in another direction.
“Don’t worry!” she whispered, the first time that there was an opportunity for a quiet word. “The General shall have his way, and everything shall be charming into the bargain. I know of a dressmaker who could make sackcloth elegant. She will manufacture even the hat with blue feathers, so that you will never have had anything so becoming in your life. Fortunately the General does not confine you to one shade of blue. And the muslins and blue ribbons will be wonderful filmy creations, as different from the Early Victorian stiffnesses as anything you can possibly imagine. How Betty will enjoy herself!”
Betty did! In all the course of her eighteen years, it was the first occasion on which she had been provided with an outfit with no regard to money, but simply to what would be prettiest and most becoming. The dress, the hat, the shoes, the gloves, the basket of pale-hued roses, were all perfect of their kind, and, to crown all, on the morning of the wedding there arrived two small morocco boxes, which, being opened, displayed two miniature gold watches, encircled with turquoise, and provided with blue enamel bows, by which they could be attached to the dress. Jill’s whoops of delight might have been heard half-way across the Square. There seemed nothing left to wish for in life, now that the long-dreamed-of “real gold” watch was actually in her grasp.
And so Terence Digby took Alice Beveridge to wife, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death did them part; and more than one spectator prayed fervently that the hour of separation should be long delayed, so that the reunited lovers might enjoy a peaceful golden summer.
They drove away from the church door, and when the bride thrust her blue-feathered toque out of the window to smile a radiant farewell, Nan Vanburgh nodded her pretty head at Betty, and cried triumphantly—
“Now behold for yourself what miracles love and home and appreciation can work! That was Miss Beveridge once on a time, and you called her a frump and a fright, but the real woman was that charming Mrs Digby, and the magician’s wand has brought her to life?”