Nichola, that grim old woman, as the ally and not the adversary of Love! But I had no time to marvel at the death of either prejudice or reason.
“Nichola—but Nichola!” I cried breathlessly, “we haven’t come to interfere. We don’t want to interfere. We were going to send for Mr. Didbin ourselves.”
At that Nichola drew back, but doubtfully, with mutterings. And she did not disappear until little Lisa, having seen the radiant faces of our bride and groom, suddenly understood and ran to them. And as for Dudley Manners, one would have said that his dearest wish had been to see Lisa married to Eric Chartres; and as for Mrs. Manners, with her kind eyes, all her fresia scattered in the path as she kissed Lisa, I think that she cannot even have noticed our Hundred-leaved rose or cared whether it had come to us from its native Caucasus or her own Alaska.
I protest that I cannot now remember whether Lisa and Eric were married by the fountain or in the rose arbour or in the garden at large. But I know that it must have been out of doors, for I remember the roses and how the sun was slanting madly in every direction and butterflies were vanishing against the blue.
And when it was over and we sat in the gracious afternoon talking joyously of what had happened and of how strangely it was come about and of how heavenly sweet the world is, there came Nichola from the house bearing to the table in the little arbour a tray unmistakably laden with her cream sherbet and with mounds of her delicate cake.
“Nichola!” I cried as I hurried to her. “You did make it?”
Nichola looked at me from her little deep eyes.
“I made it, yes,” she said, “an’ that was why I went for the minister. I’d begun it, an’ I wasn’t going to have it wasted. It would not be holy.”
It is true that Nichola can use the same argument on both sides of a question. But I have never been able to see the slightest objection to that if only the question is settled properly at last.