"We must manage it somehow, child," Miss Darcy answered, with a slight blush. "Don't trouble your head about it any more, for the thing must be done. It would be too unseemly to have you married from Steve Higgins's farm, your sisters and brothers quite agree with me; and—and—Mr. Armstrong wishes it besides—so there is nothing more to be said about it."
It was the same with her trousseau. In vain she protested, objected, revolted, against each article of attire added daily to her miserable wardrobe—against dresses, bonnets, mantles, against shoes, gloves, umbrellas, underclothes; it was all of no use. Aunt Jo and Pauline went on ordering and suggesting just as if she had not spoken. It seemed to the pained, bewildered girl that she was in the hands of every tradesman and tradeswoman in the town of Kelvick, and, after a couple of hours' shamefaced agony, she used to escape from Madame Armine's smooth wily fingers and approving exclamations in a state of impatient revolt that strangely puzzled that experienced lady. "Oh, it is unbearable," she would cry, "to be lodged, fed, clothed by him thus—unbearable to think that every pound of meat that comes to the table is paid for by him, as well as the dress, the stockings, the shoes, the gloves I shall wear standing beside him at the altar! It is unbearable to think he is paying for me before I am purchased! How can they stand it, all of them? How can Robert, whom I thought so haughty, so proud, so sensitive, take it as he does? They must know—of course they must know—and yet don't seem to mind."
At other times a mad impulse would urge her to take up the finery that was fast filling the house, and fling it at Mr. Armstrong's feet, refusing to be further suffocated by his benefits; but luckily the opportunity failed for the uncomfortable feat, as Armstrong was called away on business of importance to the North of England just a fortnight before his wedding-day, and did not reappear at Laburnum Lodge until all her boxes were safely corded and standing in a row in the hall, labeled in Robert's round schoolboy hand—"Mrs. Armstrong, Charing Cross, London."
CHAPTER VIII.
It is just a week before the wedding-morning. Aunt Jo and Pauline are discussing the bill of fare for the breakfast; Addie is lying on a sofa by the open window, languidly reading the newspaper.
"You have quite made up your mind then, Addie?" asks the elder lady. "You won't have any one at the ceremony but just our immediate circle—not even your Aunt and Uncle Beecher?"
"Quite!" answers Addie sharply. "I'll have no one but you and the boys, Polly and Lottie—not another soul. I'll be married in my traveling-dress, not in the white broché at all; and no one is to be let into the church. The doors are to be locked when we have entered."
"It will be a Quakerish kind of festival, certainly," says Pauline regretfully. "If ever I get married, I'll make a little more noise than that. And I suppose Mr. Armstrong will have none of his friends or relatives either?"
"No."