“Please don’t rip it out until I see you in it. Not many men live to see how their widows look mourning for them.”
“Widows, indeed! Kent Brown, you presume too much!” exclaimed Judy, but she could not help laughing. The hat was very becoming and she was not loathe to wear it, just once.
First Mère Tricot must be assisted with the dishes, however; but then Judy got ready to go walking with Kent.
Père Tricot undertook to be guide to Jim Castleman, offering to lead him to the proper place to enlist.
“I’ll only look into it to-day,” said Jim, grasping Kent’s hand. “I shan’t join for keeps until I have officiated as best man.”
Judy, who had gone into Marie’s tiny bedroom to get into her rescued serge suit, overheard this remark and blushed to the roots of her fluffy hair. As she put on her white lined hat, she peeped again into the mirror: “Judy Kean, you are much too rosy for a widow,” she admonished her image.
Mère Tricot saw them off, her good man and Jim to the recruiting station, and Kent and Judy to the Luxembourg Gardens, a spot hallowed by lovers.
“Well, well!” she said to herself. “The good God has brought the poor lamb her lover from the grave. I am glad, very glad,—but it is certainly a pity to waste all that good dye the butcher’s wife saved for us. It is not good when kept too long, either. I won’t throw it out yet a while, though,—some one will be wanting it, perhaps.”