“That’s right, mother, that’s right! That’s the way to talk to her. If it’s too painful to her feelings to buy nice things, you and I will go up to town and get them for her. Just wait until it comes to my turn, and won’t I enjoy myself just! Oh, dear me, how miserable I’ve been many and many a time reading those wonderful accounts of trousseaux in the newspapers, and thinking that I should never, never have the things for my own! Dozens of hats, dozens of jackets, parasols to match every dress, and as for blouses, hundreds, my dears, literally hundreds, of every sort and description!”
“Wicked waste and extravagance,” Esther said severely. “I have often wondered how brides in high position can show such a want of taste and nice feeling in first wasting so much money, and then making a public show of what is a purely personal matter. It’s beautiful and poetic to prepare new garments for the new home, but it’s vulgar and prosaic to make a show of them to satisfy public curiosity. If I could afford it a hundred times over, I would not condescend to such folly. Would you, Peggy? Whom do you agree with now, Mellicent or me?”
“Both,” said Peggy calmly. “I would have no exhibition of my fineries, but I’d love to have them all the same, and would thoroughly enjoy the selection. What is more. I believe you will yourself, for, having once forgotten yourself so far as to get engaged, there is no saying what folly you may descend to; but whatever you do, dear, I’ll help you, and come over on the eventful morn, to see that your wreath is not put on too tidily, and to give a few artistic touches to your painfully neat attire. You will let me be with you on your wedding morning, won’t you?”
“Indeed I will! I shall want every one I love around me to share in my happiness; and you, dear Peg, are associated with some of the brightest recollections of my childhood.”
“Oh, good gracious, now they are getting sentimental! I am going out into the garden to eat gooseberries!” cried Mellicent, jumping up from her seat and rushing out of the room. Mrs Asplin hesitated for a moment, and then followed suit, and the two girls who were left behind looked at one another with shy, embarrassed glances. For the first time since the announcement of the great news they were alone together, and each waited bashfully for the other to speak. Naturally, however, it was Peggy who first broke the silence.
“Then you thought it well over, Esther,” she said slowly, “and decided that you would rather marry the professor than go on with your work? You were so full of ambition for the future and so interested in your plans that it must have been difficult to give them up and resign yourself to a quiet domestic life. But I suppose you are quite sure.”
Esther smiled with that ineffable superiority of experience which divides the engaged girl from her old associates.
“I never thought it over. I never ‘decided’ or ‘resigned myself’ or anything of the kind. Edward wanted me, and that was enough. There was not room in my mind to think of anything but him. To be with him and help him is all I care for now.”
“And it was no effort, none at all, to give up what you had worked for all your life? When he asked you to marry him, and you thought of your work, had you no hesitation, no qualm?”
“I—I never thought of it! I forgot all about it!” said Esther, blushing; and Peggy bent forward to kiss her with a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.