“Aunt Louisa had sent Belle a yellow wedding dress!
“When Mother held it up for us to see, I thought it was the most beautiful color I had ever seen and wondered why Belle cried. I soon learned.
“Belle had light brown hair and freckles, and yellow was not becoming to her. To prove it, she held the goods up to her face.
“‘It does make your hair look dead and sort of colorless,’ Aggie agreed.
“‘And your freckles stand out as if they were starting to meet a fellow,’ Charlie put in.
“At this Belle began to cry again, and Father said that she did not have to wear a yellow dress to be married in if she didn’t want to. She should have a white dress. But this didn’t seem to comfort Belle a bit, for she declared that she wouldn’t hurt Aunt Louisa’s feelings by not wearing the yellow.
“My tooth got worse, and for the next few days I could think of nothing else. Mother poulticed my jaw and put medicine in my tooth, but nothing helped it. I cried and cried and couldn’t sleep at night, and Mother couldn’t sleep. At last she told Father that he would have to take me to Clayville to have the tooth pulled. There was fine sledding, and early the next morning Father and I set out. The last thing Mother said to Father, as she put a hot brick to my feet and wrapped me, head and all, in a thick comfort, was, ‘As soon as the tooth is out, John, take her over to Louisa’s till you get ready to start home.’
“The roads were smooth as glass, Father was a fast driver, and it didn’t seem long till we got to town. My tooth was soon out—it hardly hurt at all—and then Father took me to Aunt Louisa’s. We all liked Aunt Louisa. She was very fond of children and had none of her own.