“Toots!” said Kate, relieved. “If it's only for them, I needn't bother. I thought that maybe it was something truly refined that he would be expecting. It's not—it's not the front of a house I'm marrying. Tell me this and tell me no more—is there anything special I should do to please my Charles?”
“I don't think I'd worry,” said Bud, on reflection. “I dare say it's better not to think of anything dramatic. If I were you I'd just keep calm as grass, and pray the Lord to give me a good, contented mind and hurry up the clergyman.”
But yet was the maiden full of a consciousness of imperfection, since she had seen that day the bride's-cake on view in the baker's window—an edifice of art so splendid that she felt she could never be worthy of it. “How do you think I'll look?” she asked. And Bud assured her she would look magnificently lovely.
“Oh, I wish I did,” she sighed. “But I'm feared I'll not look so lovely as I think I do.”
“No girl ever did,” said Bud. “That's impossible. But when Charles comes to and sits up he'll think you're It; he'll think you perfect.”
“Indeed, I'm far from that,” said Kate. “I have just my health and napery and a liking for the chap, and I wish I wasn't near so red.”
Bud was able to instruct her in the right deportment for a bride, but had no experience in the management of husbands; for that Kate had to take some hints from her mistress, who was under the delusion that her brother Dan was the standard of his sex.
“They're curious creatures,” Bell confided. “You must have patience, ay, and humor them. They'll trot at your heels like pussy for a cheese-pudding, but they'll not be driven. If I had a man I would never thwart him. If he was out of temper or unreasonable I would tell him he was looking ill, and that would make him feared and humble. When a man thinks he's ill, his trust must be in the Lord and in his womankind. That's where we have the upper hand of them! First and last the thing's to be agreeable. You'll find he'll never put anything in its proper place, and that's a heartbreak, but it's not so bad as if he broke the dishes and blackened your eyes, the way they do in the newspapers. There's one thing that's the secret of a happy home—to live in the fear of God and within your income; faith! you can't live very well without it.”
“Oh, m'em! it's a desperate thing a wedding,” said the maid. “I never in all my life had so much to think about before.”
There were stricken lads in these days! The more imminent became her utter loss, the more desirable Kate became; but sentiment in country towns is an accommodating thing, and all the old suitors—the whistlers in the close and purveyors of conversation lozenges—found consolation in the fun at the wedding, and danced their griefs away on the flags of the Dyces' kitchen.