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Page 5
Your loving
POLLY.
[Illustration: "Katy opened the parcel, and beheld a square veil of
beautiful old blonde."]
Katy handed the note silently to Clover, and laid her face for a little
while among the soft folds of the lace, about which a faint odor of roses
hung like the breath of old-time and unforgotten loves and affections.
"Shall you?" queried Clover, softly.
"Why, of course! Doesn't it seem too sweet? Both our mothers!"
"There!" cried Amy, "you are going to cry too, Tanta! I thought weddings
were nice funny things. I never supposed they made people feel badly. I
sha'n't ever let Mabel get married, I think. But she'll have to stay a
little girl always in that case, for I certainly won't have her an old
maid."
"What do you know about old maids, midget?" asked Clover.
"Why, Miss Clover, I have seen lots of them. There was that one at the
Pension Suisse; you remember, Tanta? And the two on the steamer when we
came home. And there's Miss Fitz who made my blue frock; Ellen said she
was a regular old maid. I never mean to let Mabel be like that."
"I don't think there's the least danger," remarked Katy, glancing at the
inseparable Mabel, who was perched on Amy's arm, and who did not look a
day older than she had done eighteen months previously. "Amy, we're going
to make wedding-cake next week,--heaps and heaps of wedding-cake. Don't
you want to come and help?"
"Why, of course I do. What fun! Which day may I come?"
The cake-making did really turn out fun. Many hands made light work of
what would have been a formidable job for one or two. It was all done
gradually. Johnnie cut the golden citron quarters into thin transparent
slices in the sitting-room one morning while the others were sewing, and
reading Tennyson aloud. Elsie and Amy made a regular frolic of the
currant-washing. Katy, with Debby's assistance, weighed and measured; and
the mixture was enthusiastically stirred by Alexander, with the "spade"
which he had invented, in a large new wash-tub. Then came the baking,
which for two days filled the house with spicy, plum-puddingy odors; then
the great feat of icing the big square loaves; and then the cutting up, in
which all took part. There was much careful measurement that the slices
might be an exact fit; and the kitchen rang with bright laughter and chat
as Katy and Clover wielded the sharp bread-knives, and the others fitted
the portions into their boxes, and tied the ribbons in crisp little bows.
Many delicious crumbs and odd corners and fragments fell to the share of
the younger workers; and altogether the occasion struck Amy as so
enjoyable that she announced--with her mouth full--that she had changed
her mind, and that Mabel might get married as often as she pleased, if she
would have cake like _that_ every time,--a liberality of permission which
Mabel listened to with her invariable waxen smile.
When all was over, and the last ribbons tied, the hundreds of little boxes
were stacked in careful piles on a shelf of the inner closet of the
doctor's office to wait till they were wanted,--an arrangement which
naughty Clover pronounced eminently suitable, since there should always
be a doctor close at hand where there was so much wedding-cake. But before
all this was accomplished, came what Katy, in imitation of one of Miss
Edgeworth's heroines, called "The Day of Happy Letters."
CHAPTER II.
THE DAY OF HAPPY LETTERS.
The arrival of the morning boat with letters and newspapers from the East
was the great event of the day in Burnet. It was due at eleven o'clock;
and everybody, consciously or unconsciously, was on the lookout for it.
The gentlemen were at the office bright and early, and stood chatting with
each other, and fingering the keys of their little drawers till the rattle
of the shutter announced that the mail was distributed. Their wives and
daughters at home, meanwhile, were equally in a state of expectation, and
whatever they might be doing kept ears and eyes on the alert for the step
on the gravel and the click of the latch which betokened the arrival of
the family news-bringer.
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