"How lovely you look," cried Barbara, in admiration. "You look like a bride."
"Make yourself look bridal also," suggested Eloise, flushing, "by putting on your best white gown. Roger is coming, too."
Barbara missed the point entirely. It did not take her long to get ready, and she sang happily to herself while she was dressing. She put a white lace scarf of her mother's over her golden hair, which was now piled high on her shapely head, and started out, for the first time in all her twenty-two years, for a journey beyond the limits of her own domain.
Allan and Roger helped her in. She was very awkward about it, and was sufficiently impressed with her awkwardness to offer a laughing apology. "I've never been in a carriage before," she said, "nor seen a train, nor even a church. All I've had is pictures and books—and Roger," she added, as an afterthought, when he took his place beside her on the back seat.
"You're going to see lots of things to-day that you never saw before," observed Allan, starting the horses toward the hill road. "We'll begin by showing you a church, and then a wedding."
"A wedding!" cried Barbara. "Who is going to be married?"
"We," he replied, concisely. "Don't you think it's time?"
"Isn't it sudden?" asked Roger. "I thought you weren't going to be married until almost Christmas."
"I've been serving time now for two years," explained Allan, "and she's given me two months off for good behaviour. Just remember, young man, when your turn comes, that nothing is sudden when you've been waiting for it all your life."
The Little White Church