Ma and Mrs. Graham had a booth together at the Sanitary
Fair."
"The pew behind, eh? I haven't the slightest recollection of them." She
marked the name off altogether.
She made a thorough revision of her mother's list. Then she turned to her
own. "Now, _these_ people--I _know_ all of _them_, and am indebted to
them, and expect to have relations with them after I come back. They've
all got to stay on."
"Very good," said Jane, meekly. What else could she say? Was it not to
some such social triumph as this that for a good six months she had bent
all her own endeavors? She tried now to make the triumph seem as glorious
as it should, but she could not feel that she was succeeding.
Another stage in the proceeding arrived when the gowns began to come home
from the dress-maker's. Jane then laid aside her pen to find pins, to
contrive ruchings, to catch up the loose ends of draperies, while her
mother and her sister Alice and her aunt Lydia circled and fluttered and
swooped and chattered through a hundred suggestions and amendments and
alterations. Then Jane would stand upon the threshold, and blink
tearfully and indignantly into the gloom of the hall. "Nobody thinks of
_me_," she would say, chokingly; "nobody cares for me; nobody seems to
imagine that I've got a heart, too!"
And, lastly, the day itself;--when Truesdale, decorated with a daring and
wanton orchid, followed Paston out into the middle of the chancel of a
crowded and buzzing church; when his father, despite his failing powers
and an innate repugnance to the conscious dramatization involved in the
ceremonial side of life, led Rosamond up a long aisle with the tremulous
embarrassment of an invalid and a novice, and parted from her in front of
a broad pair of lawn sleeves; and when Cecilia Ingles scattered a
wide shower of rice over the broken flagging of the old front walk, as
Mr.
Pages:
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323