We are to be married on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, and take the night boat for Boston and thence to Maine, to Three Meadows. It was M.D. who sent me there by scolding me into realization of my grubbiness four years ago; I want to have my honeymoon there. The Deacon and "Angerleek" have a little house which they rent, and they are making it ready for us.
I'm afraid every one at home will think me quite mad to be married here instead of in my dear old house, but Sally, after all, my wedding belongs to this world, not to that. I shall be married here at Mrs. Hills' in her big old double parlors, the ugliness conquered with flowers, and I shall wear my traveling things—as the village paper would say—"the bride, attired in a modish going-away gown"—I know you'll wail for all the trimmings, Sally dear,—the veil and the train and all the rest, but that sort of thing belongs to eighteen, not twenty-eight. I'm beyond the age of opera bouffe weddings,—I don't vision myself coming down a white-ribboned aisle with wobbly knees, covered with orange blossoms and gooseflesh! But—oh, Sally, the truth is that I would be married in a mackintosh or a bathing suit, I'm so dizzily, dazedly happy!
Dolores Tristeza, good as an angel out of a frieze, agrees to stay docilely with Emma Ellis at Hope House while we are away. She calls her "Ella de la barba" with reference to the small but determined little fringe on poor E.E.'s chin and I tremble—no, I don't! I'm not afraid of anything now. Everything is and will be perfect.
If only you can come, best of friends!
Happily,
Jane.
The Day!
My Dearest Sally,
"I must be making haste,
I have no time to waste—