“Then be led into the conservatory”—Nancy paid no attention to the interruption—“have the moonlight turned on. Horrors, think of that artificial moonlight!” Nancy shuddered. “And then say yes! Heavens! I hope I shan’t say yes until it’s time. It would be awful to miscue at that stage of the game!”
Mrs. Warren rose abruptly from her chair, and without a word started for the door, quivering with indignation.
“There! I’ve been a brute again,” cried Nancy, penitently, dashing after her mother.
“Yes, I think you have,” blazed Mrs. Warren.
“I was only fooling, dearie; it’s all going to be lovely, and I’m going into that conservatory just as valiantly as the Rough Riders charged up old San Juan! Only, Marmee, don’t ask me to wear white—that would be too absurd! Frankly, I’m susceptible to color. You’ve heard about the little boy who whistled in the dark to keep his courage up?” Mrs. Warren smiled through her tears. “Well, I’m going to wear my red—red is cheerful, and not too innocent, and—and courageous—I mean,” Nancy explained, hastily, as she caught her mother’s look of wonder. “It always requires some courage for a girl to say she will marry a man, even when the circumstances are as—as happy as they are in this case. Didn’t you feel just a little bit queer when you told dad you’d marry him?”
“Why, yes, I suppose I did,” said Mrs. Warren, half doubtfully.
“Well, then,” said Nancy, logically, “you can understand just what I mean. I’ve a scrap of lace”—reverting to the burning question—“that I’m going to hunt up, that will freshen the red a lot, and some day, Marmee”—she took her mother’s face between her cool, slim hands, and laughed with a fine assumption of gayety—“we’ll have such closetfuls of dainty, bewitching ‘creations’ that we’ll quite forget we ever envied Mother Eve because she didn’t have to rack her brains about what to wear.”
Mrs. Warren laughed. Her indignation had vanished. Nancy had a winsome way with her when she chose that was irresistible to the older woman.
“Now you go take a nice little nap, Marmee”—she kissed her mother lightly on the forehead—“while the future Mrs. James Thornton ferrets out the scrap of lace which is to be the pièce de résistance of Juliet’s costume when she goes to meet her portly Romeo!” She laughed merrily, and with a sweeping courtesy ushered her mother out of the room.
As soon as the door had closed behind Mrs. Warren, Nancy, singing lustily, yet with a certain nervousness, as if to drown all power of thought, bustled about the room, peering into topsy-turvy bureau drawers and ransacking inconsequent-looking boxes, with a half-feverish energy, as though upon the unearthing of that particular piece of lace depended her hopes of heaven.