Afterward (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. JANNAH'S wedding was a quiet, matter- of-fact affair, by reason of its being winter time; for the six months of Phoebe's training brought it hard upon Christmas?a snowy Christmas, with hard freezing, and ice in all the pools. I and Phoebe were the bridesmaids, James Hartley giving away his daughter. There was no fuss nor show. Phoebe wore a white ribbon in her cap, as did the bride; I also wore a white bow at my throat, and had a new dark blue serge dress in honour of the occasion, because of my being still in mourning for my mother. They ate their wedding dinner at our house. It was but two days before Christmas, so we had put up the holly, and we young ones thought it a mighty fine thing to have a wedding in the house. The bride wore a blue serge dress, and I made her up a little nosegay of our own monthly roses. They were put upon the dinner table, at which my father sat and carved one of his own large, well-cured hams, and I helpedthe vegetables, trying to play the graceful hostess, and succeeding. For my father said to me, when he and I stood aside in my mother's nook, after it was over: " What makes my little lass's hands so winsome ? " with a proud ring in his voice, which set my heart fluttering; for I knew then that I had comported myself with credit. And indeed I had tried to look well to my ways all those six months of Phoebe's probation, setting that perfect work before me which my mother had spoken of as in wistful presentiment. I was fast becoming womanly and gentle, more of a lady than was my poor mother, bnt her living image, was said of me by one and another. What of grace and refinement was about me came of my communing with nature, not of any book culture or study. It seemed to me that the gorgeous sunrisings and sunsettings wove ...