your wedding dress and not hers. And she couldn’t have hurt it much in that short time. Don’t you think she ought to wear a real wedding dress, Graham?” asked the old lady briskly, turning to the young man as if she had known him since his first long trousers.
Copeland’s eyes lighted.
“I’d love to see you in it!” he said, looking at Sherrill with adoring eyes.
“Oh, then I’ll wear it, of course,” said Sherrill with starry eyes. “It was really awfully hard to give up wearing it—it was so pretty.”
“Of course!” said Aunt Pat brusquely. “And why should you? Forget that other girl, and the whole silly muddle. Now, young man, what is there to do besides getting her suitcase packed? Have you got the license yet?”
“No, but I know where to get it, and I’m going for it right away.”
“Very well,” said Aunt Pat. “I’ll have the chauffeur take you. Sherrill, what about bridesmaids? Yours are all scattered.”
“Do I have to have them?” asked Sherrill, aghast.
“I don’t see why,” said her aunt. “I suppose we’ll have to ask in a few friends, a dozen perhaps, just Cousin Phyllis and her family and maybe the Grants, they’re such old friends. I’ll think it over.”
“And I wouldn’t have to be given away or any of that fuss either, would I? It all seems so silly,” pleaded Sherrill. “I thought before that if I had to do it over again, I’d never want all that. Couldn’t Graham and I just walk downstairs together and be married without any elaborate extras?”
“You certainly could,” said Aunt Pat. “If your Graham doesn’t feel that he is being cheated out of his rights to a formal wedding.”
“Not on your life!” grinned Graham Copeland. “I’d hate it all! But of course I’d go through a good many times that and worse to get her if it was necessary. All I want is a simple ceremony and your blessing.”
“Blest be!” said Aunt Pat. “Now, get you gone and come back as soon as possible. Sherrill, send Gemmie to me, and tell her to send up the cook. We’ll scratch together a few green peas and a piece of bread and butter for a simple little wedding supper. No, don’t worry. I won’t do anything elaborate. What time do you have to leave, Graham? All right. She’ll be ready!”
Sherrill stayed behind after her lover had gone, to throw her arms around her aunt’s neck and kiss her many times.
“Oh, Aunt Pat! You are the greatest woman in the world!” she said excitedly.
“Well, you’re getting a real man this time, and no mistake!” said the old lady with satisfaction. “When you have time, I’ll show you the letter my friend Judge Porter wrote about him, but that’ll keep. You had better go and get your things together. I’ll send Gemmie to help you as soon as I’m done with her.”
So Sherrill hurried to her room on glad feet and began to get her things together. She went to the trunk room and found her own new suitcase with its handsome fittings, still partly packed as it had been on that fateful wedding night. She went to the drawers and closets and got out the piles of pretty lingerie, the lovely negligees, dumped them on the bed, and looked at them with a dreamy smile, as if they were long-lost friends come back to their own, but when Gemmie arrived, stern and disapproving still, she had not gotten far in her packing.
“Miss Patricia says you’re to lie down for half an hour right away!” she announced grimly. “And I’m to do your packing. She says you’re tired to death and won’t be fit to travel if you don’t.”
“All right!” said Sherrill with a lilt in her voice, kicking her little blue shoes off and submitting to be tucked into her bed, blue organdy and all.
Gemmie, with a baleful glance at her, shut her lips tight and went silently about her packing, laying in things with skillful hand, folding them precisely, thinking of things that Sherrill in her excited state never would have remembered. And Sherrill with a happy sigh closed her eyes and tried to realize that it was really herself and not some other girl who was lying here, going to be married within the next few hours.
But there are limits to the length of time even an excited girl like Sherrill can lie still, and before the half hour was over she was up, her voice fresh and rested,