"Eveleen," I exclaimed, starting up in bed, "what do you mean?"
"Exactly what I say. And as Constance slept with her last night she will probably have them also, so that you will, at any rate, be two bridesmaids short. Read that."
She handed me a letter which she had been holding in her hand. Seating herself on the side of my bed, she watched me with an air of calm resignation while I read it. It was easy enough for her to be calm; it was different for me. I had arranged for four bridesmaids. Bertha Ellis was to be one; her cousin, Constance Farrer, was to be another. Bertha had had for some days what we had thought was a cold; during the night it had turned into measles--at her time of life, because she was as old as I was. And Constance had actually slept in the same bed with her. So, as Mrs Ellis had written to point out, it was altogether out of the question that either of them should be present at my wedding.
"Now," I demanded, "perhaps you will be so good as to tell me what I am to do."
"I suppose it would be too late to get anyone to take their places?"
"At the eleventh hour--practically at the church door? And who is to get into their dresses? They are both of them so ridiculously small."
"You would have them like that in order to make you look tall. It seems as if it were a judgment."
"How can you say such awful things? Why don't you suggest something?"
"The only thing I am able to suggest is that you should do without them and put up with Ellen and me.
"You know very well that I only asked Ellen Mackenzie because I knew that her mother was going to give me a diamond brooch--and now it's stolen. It's not alone that she's hideous, but she won't harmonise with me in the very least; and, anyhow, having only two bridesmaids will spoil everything."