Y.D. had not thought he could become so worked up over a simple matter like a wedding. Time had dulled the edge of memory, but even after making allowances he could not recall that his marriage to Jessie Wilson had been such an event in his life as this. It did not at least reflect so much glory upon him personally. He basked in the reflected glow of his daughter’s beauty and popularity, as happily as the big cat lying on the sunny side of the bunk-house. He found all sorts of excuses for invading where his presence was little wanted while Zen’s finery was being displayed for admiration. Y.D. always pretended that such invasions were quite accidental, and affected a fine indifference to all this “women’s fuss an’ feathers,” but his affectations deceived at least none of the older visitors.
As the great day approached Y.D.‘s wife shot a bomb-shell at him. “What do you propose to wear for Zen’s wedding?” she demanded.
“What’s the matter with the suit I go to town in?”
“Y.D.,” said his wife, kindly, “there are certain little touches which you overlook. Your town suit is all right for selling steers, although I won’t say that it hasn’t outlived its prime even for that. To attend Zen’s wedding it is—hardly the thing.”
“It’s been a good suit,” he protested. “It is—”
“It HAS. It is also a venerable suit. But really, Y.D., it will not do for this occasion. You must get yourself a new suit, and a white shirt—”
“What do I want with a white shirt—”
“It has to be,” his wife insisted. “You’ll have to deck yourself out in a new suit and a while shirt and collar.”
Y.D. stamped around the room, and in a moment slipped out. “All fool nonsense,” he confided to himself, on his way to the bunk-house. “It’s all right for Zen to have good clothes—didn’t I tell her to go the limit?—but as for me, ‘tain’t me that’s gettin’ married, is it? Standin’ up before all them cow punchers in a white shirt!” The bitterness of such disgrace cut the old rancher no less keenly than the physical discomfort which he forecast for himself, yet he put his own desires sufficiently to one side to buy a suit of clothes, and a white shirt and collar, when he was next in town.
It must not be supposed that Y.D. admitted to the salesman that he personally was descending to any such garb.