It is about the wedding day that I’m to tell you. I wish you could have seen the tables after they were ready. They did look too lovely for anything! The central table was magnificent. All the old silver and queer, quaint china which have been in grandma’s family for ages, had been brought out for decoration, and people say that the tablecloth was the finest piece of old damask that has ever been used in this part of the world. If I had Nettie’s descriptive powers, I could give you a picture of the whole; but as it is, I want you to confine your attention to one dish—the loveliest cut-glass beauty that was ever seen. It was amber-colored sometimes, with little threads of crimson running through it, which reminded one of a sunset. Besides, it was a very peculiarly-shaped dish, and as frail as a cobweb. Uncle Fred found it in Paris, and brought it to the bride. Uncle Fred, you understand, is the bridegroom.
Well, it was on the special wedding table, just before the bride’s seat, and was filled with the most exquisite flowers.
Grandma did not want the dish used, because it was so frail and so rare, but aunt Kate insisted that it should be placed just there, and be filled with orange-buds.
Grandma had just seen that the very last touches had been put to the table, and had taken the children in for a look, and then had said, as she shut the dining-room door: “Now, don’t one of you children open that door again. I wouldn’t have anything go wrong in there for a great deal.”
Then she went up to take a last look at aunt Kate, before she became Mrs. Fred Somerville.
Just at that moment little Sallie Evans came running down the hall, her eyes full of tears. Her mamma had called her just as grandma took the children in to see the tables, and she had missed the sight.
“And now I sha’n’t see them at all, till everything is spoiled,” she said, “for they aren’t going to let the little bits of cousins come to the first table.” And she sobbed outright.
Now it never entered my mind that grandma meant me, when she said, “You children,” because—well, because, you know, I am thirteen, and there are three at home, younger than I, and I’m used to being trusted. So I said, “Never mind, Sallie, I’ll let you look at them; but you must look fast, for it is almost time for the wedding.”
So, in we went. And Sallie, who is the most beauty-loving little creature of eight, whom I ever saw, seemed to have eyes only for that lovely glass dish, which she had never seen before. She clasped her hands together with an eager little “Oh!” and ran towards it. I don’t suppose she would have touched it, but I was excited, and so afraid she would, that I ran after her, calling out, “Don’t touch anything!” and put out my hand to prevent it. And then, I don’t know how it happened—does anybody know how such accidents happen? The lace from my sleeve caught in one of the points of the glass, or in one of the stems of flowers, or somehow,—I don’t suppose I could do it again if I tried,—but over that glass went, the water pouring itself out in the most disgusting way, on the damask cloth, and a long crooked piece snapped from the upper edge of the dish!
O, dear! Don’t ask me how I felt. I couldn’t describe it, even though I were sitting on the dear old bed at No. 7, with half a dozen of you beside me, and the rest cuddled around close at hand.