“And the wedding? The old San’s just set its heart on that wedding.”
The radiant smile crept back to Sheila’s lips. Even in the dark Peter could tell that the old luminous Leerie was beside him once more. “Why, that’s one of the nicest parts of it all. We’re going to pass our wedding on to those children—make them a sort of wedding-present of it. Won’t that be splendid?”
“Oh yes,” said Peter, without enthusiasm. “Does it suit them?”
“They don’t know yet. Guess I’d better go and tell them.”
It is doubtful if anybody but Sheila O’Leary could have managed such an affair and left every one reasonably happy over it—two of them unreasonably so. She accepted the wedding collation bestowed by the wealthy old ladies of the sanitarium and passed it over to the boy and his betrothed as if it had been as trivial a gift as an ice-cream cone. In a like manner she passed on the trousseau, kissed all the nurses rapturously for their work, and piled it all into Clarisse’s arms with the remark that it was lucky they were so nearly of a size. When she brought the wedding-dress she kissed her, too, and said that she was going to make the prettiest picture in it that the San or the soldier had seen in years. She placated the management; she wheedled Miss Maxwell into a good humor; she even coaxed Doctor Fuller into giving away the bride. Only Hennessy refused to be propitiated.
“Are ye thinkin’ of givin’ Mr. Brooks away with everythin’ else?” he asked, scornfully; and then, his indignation rising to a white wrath, he shouted, “I’ll not put bows on the swans, an’ I’ll not come to any second-hand weddin’.”
But he did come, and held with Flanders the satin ribbons they had promised to hold for Sheila. And the wedding became one of the greenest of all the memories that had gone down on the San books.
As the sun clipped the far-away hills the boy was wheeled down the paths to where the gold and white of early roses were massed in summer splendor. Then came the girl with Sheila at her side; the girl had begged too hard to be refused. But Sheila’s face was as white as it had been the day they operated on Doctor Dempsy, and only Peter guessed what it cost her to stand with the bride. To Peter’s care had been intrusted the little mother, and he let her weep continually on his shoulder in between the laughs he kept bringing to her lips.
And it all ended merrily. Sheila saw to that. But perhaps the thing that gave her the keenest pleasure was wheedling out of Mr. Crotchets his bungalow that stood on the slopes beyond the golf-links for a honeymoon.
“They’ll have all the quiet they want and the care he still needs,” she told Peter when they were alone. “And nobody but the nurse in charge knows about it—yet.” Then seeing the great longing in Peter’s eyes, she drew him away from the crowd. “Listen, man of mine! I have the feeling that when we are married there will be no wedding, just you and I and the preacher. And in my heart I like it better that way.”