The Annals of Ann Part 6

Being in love with Marcella weighed so on Julius' mind that he couldn't stay in New York but one week where the magazine is that he draws for, so he came back and has been here ever since, loving and drawing and sending them the jobs by mail. Right away they set the wedding for the eleventh of April, which seems like it _never_ will come, me being in a big hurry for it. Poor Julius gets more and more delighted every day, talking a heap about what a happy home they're going to have, not realizing that Chopin and dish-pan don't go together. He stays around and advises Marcella about her clothes and such-like all day long. He says she reminds him of a narcissus, being tall and creamy-skinned, so he wants all her dresses to be either white or light green, the color of right young lettuce. But she knows when really to take his advice and when just to make like she's taking it, the way most ladies do with men.

"Why, it would take a little pink milksop like Bertha Parkes to wear such colors as _those_," she said behind his back one day. But I don't think Marcella better be calling Bertha a _milksop_ just because she has to handle baby-bottles all the time, for a person never can tell what might happen to them.

One of the nicest things about the wedding is the bridesmaids. They consist of girls born partly here in the country, partly in the cities Marcella has visited and made friends with. The one I like best is Miss Cicely Reeves, though most people around here call her Cis, being very small, with fluffy hair and cute ways and dimples. She has a good many lovers of different kinds, but don't seem to like one above another. She is a great hand to act romantic, such as falling in love with a man in a streetcar, or expecting her future husband to be a certain size and comb his hair a certain way and things like that.

This often keeps young ladies from getting married a long time, for mother says you oughtn't to be too choice about size and hair, but I can't help being on that order myself. I do hope I can marry a man on a jet-black charger named Sir Reginald de Beverley who owns _acres_ and _acres_ of English landed gentry.

Miss Cis had that experience with the _name_ of Julius' best man. It happened that we were all sitting on the front step one day when Julius pulled a letter out of his pocket and told Marcella that he had just heard from Malcolm Macdonald, and that he was going to be his best man.

"_Who?_" asked Miss Cis right quick, looking up from the sprig of bridal wreath she was pulling the flowers off of.

Julius told her the name over again and then told her that he was a very old friend of his and was a fine civil engineer. I used to think a civil engineer was a _polite_ man who ran the trains, but I know now he is a man that gets in the middle of the street with a string and a three-legged thing and measures the road.

"Is he married?" Miss Cis asked a heap quicker than she had asked who.

"No, and not likely to be," Julius answered, still looking over the letter absent-mindedly.

"The name sounds good," Miss Cis commenced, her eyes sparkling. "I never heard anything Scotchier. Something tells me he must be my ideal."

"Then 'something' must be telling you a lie," Julius said laughing, "for he couldn't be any woman's ideal. He is very _real_. An old bachelor, thirty-seven years, stern and precise; and he considers every woman on earth as a frivolous and _un_necessary evil."

"The kind of man I adore," Miss Cis said joyfully, though anybody that knew her well could tell she was fooling. "My life will be a blank until he comes!"

"It would be a blankety-blank if you had to live with him, for you are the kind of woman to torment such a man to death."

"All the more reason for his falling in love with me, as I have fallen in love with his name, and if he doesn't I shall consider him a very _un_civil engineer." Which was just her way of talking. This happened fully two months ago, but they have talked about it off and on ever since. And now he is coming to stay with Julius till the wedding, to cheer him up I suppose.

Sure enough he did come to-day, although lots of times I imagine that I never will get to see a person I have heard spoken of so often and in such high tones--and sometimes I wish I hadn't. But it wasn't that way with Mr. Macdonald. n.o.body on earth could have been disappointed in _him_ for he is one of the tallest gentlemen I ever saw with trousers so smoothly creased that they look like somebody had ironed them after he put them on. He takes his own time about saying things, being very careful about saying "of whom" and "by which" like the grammar tells you to.

Julius brought him over to Marcella's this afternoon so he could be making friends with her and the bridesmaids that were collected there.

Remembering how they had been teasing Miss Cis about him I kept my eye on her from the minute he walked through the door. I was greatly disappointed though, for she never _seemed_ to notice him. I guess she took a better look at him than I imagined though, for the minute they were gone she jumped clear across the room to where Marcella was standing and grabbed her and danced up and down.

"Isn't he _beautiful_!" she said all out of breath. "I'm just crazy about him! Did you ever see such Gibsony feet and legs in your _life_?" Which mortified her mother, it being impolite to mention feet and legs in her days.

Julius is romantic, too, for a man, and says he doesn't want any flowers used in connection with his wedding except the sweet, early spring ones that favor Marcella so much. We have a yard full of them and so mother told them this morning that they better come over and gather them, knowing that young folks enjoy picking flowers together and they will stay fresh for several days if you put a little salt in the water.

It was the most beautiful morning you ever saw, with birds and peach blossoms and the smell of plowed ground all making curious feelings inside of you. Marcella, being a musician, noticed the birds, and Julius, being an artist, noticed the peach blossoms, but Mr.

Macdonald, being just a man, noticed Miss Cis. She would walk along without noticing him and take a seat in the farthest corner away from him, but anyhow she seemed to do the work, which taught me a lesson; that if you're trying to get a man to notice you it is the best plan not to notice them except when they ain't looking.

They sat down on the porch and rested a while after they came while the narcissuses (narcissi _they_ called them, which sounds stuck up to me) smelled very sweet from the yard. Julius remarked he wished they had made Rufe come along with them so he could have said poetry out of Keats, as it was just the kind of day to make you feel Keatsy; and pretty soon he and Marcella got on to their favorite subject, "The Ruby Yacht," which they say is a piece of poetry from Persia. They talked and talked, which made me very sleepy and pretty soon I noticed that Mr. Macdonald was getting sleepy too. He leaned over to Miss Cis and said, kinder whispery:

"I don't understand poetry, do you?"

"No, I don't," she answered back, with a smile on her face which I knew she meant to be "congenial." I knew this was a story, for she talks about "The Ruby Yacht" as much as anybody when he ain't around, but I didn't blame her for telling one in a case like this.

"I never could discover what the deuced Ruby Yacht was about, in the first place," he said.

"It looks like, from the name," I said speaking up, "that it would be about a red s.h.i.+p," but before I could get any further they began to laugh and tell my remark to Julius and Marcella, which was mortifying.

This broke up the poetry talk and they began gathering the flowers, Miss Cis and Mr. Macdonald picking in pairs, by which I knew they were getting affinityfied.

After they had picked till their backs were tired Mammy Lou came out on the porch bringing a waiter with some of her best white cake and a bottle of her year-before-last-before-that's wine setting on it and her finest ruffled cap, very proud. She was curious to see the young man "Miss Cis was settin' up to, to see whether the match was a fittin' one or not." She took a good look at him, then called Miss Cis into the hall to speak her opinion.

"He'll _do_," I heard her saying, while Miss Cis was telling her to "s-s-sh, Mr. MacDonald would hear her."

"He'll _do_," mammy kept on, not paying any attention to what was told her, like she always don't. "He must be all right, for bein' a frien'

o' Mr. Juliuses would pa.s.s 'im.' But, honey, he _is_ tolerable _po_-faced, which ain't no good sign in marryin'. If thar's anybody better experienced in that business than _me_ and King Solomon I'd like to see the whites o' ther eyes; an' I tell you every time, if you want to get a good-natured, wood-cuttin', baby-tendin' husban' choose one that's _fat in the face_!"

A good many wedding presents commenced to coming in this morning, which was a sign that the invitations got to the people all right. You often hear of things being worth their weight in silver, but there's _one_ thing you can count on it's being true about and that is wedding invitations. You never saw such delighted people as Julius and Marcella. They were laid out on tables in the parlor and greatly admired.

"They're _ours_, dearest," he said, squeezing her hand right before everybody, "yours and mine! Our Lares and Penates."

This greatly impressed me and I looked it up in the back of the dictionary when I got home, which is a very useful place to find strange words. It said: "Lares et Penates, household G.o.ds," which didn't make sense, so I knew the dictionary man must have made a mistake and meant to say household _goods_.

"Gentle-_men_!" said Mammy Lou when I told the words to her, "if he thinks up such names as _them_ for his fu'niture what _will_ he do when he gets to his chil'en?"

This remark seemed to put an idea into her head, for Lovie, mammy's other daughter besides Dilsey, has got a pair of two little twins that have been going around for the last five years in need of a name just because Mammy Lou and Ike, their father, can't ever agree on one--a name nor anything else.

"Them's the very names for the little angels," Mammy said, was.h.i.+ng the dinner dishes deep in thought, "for the twins bein' boys and girls and the names bein' able to accommodate therselves to ary sect proves that they're the _very thing_." She studied over it for a good while, I guess on account of Ike, although mammy is usually what she calls very plain-spoken with him. A plain-spoken person is one that says nasty things to your face and expects you not to get mad. When they say them behind your back they're "diplomatic." But finally she started off to name them, and, having had so much trouble already with Ike, I saw her slip her heavy-soled slippers into her pocket before she started. She stayed away a long, long time, but when she got back she held her head so high and acted so stuck-up that I just knew she had got to use both the names and the slippers.

"Did you name 'em?" I asked her, going to the kitchen to get some tea-cakes, supper being very late.

"_Did I?_" she answered back, cutting out the biscuits with a haughty look, "you just oughter a _saw_ me namin' 'em!"

"Which did you name which?" I asked.

"I named the precious boy Penates, because I most know these common n.i.g.g.e.rs roun' here'll shorten it to 'Peanuts' which would be hurtin'

to a little girl's feelin's."

"Well," I said, continuing to show a friendly interest, "ain't you glad they're named at last, so's if they die you could have a tombstone for them?"

"Glad!" she answered, putting the biscuits in the pan (but her mind still on the twins), and sticking holes in the top of them with a fork, "glad ain't no name for it! Why, I ain't had as much enjoyment out o' nothin' as I had out o' this namin' sence the night I married Bill Williams!"

It's a very thrilling and exciting thing to be a bride and if you can't be a bride you can still manage to get a good many thrills out of just a bridesmaid. All of Marcella's have talked about how nervous and timid they are going to be--when the men are around--and some say they nearly faint when a great crowd stares at them, others say they bet folks will think they've got St. Vituses' dance from trembling so; anyhow, they're all very modest. But Miss Cis, I believe, ain't putting on, for all she claims toward modestness is that her knees get so weak that they nearly let her drop when she acts a bridesmaid, which is the way a good many persons feel. The maids have laughed a good deal over her knees among themselves, never dreaming that the men would catch on to them, but they did in the following manner:

Miss Cis stayed all night at Marcella's last night to tell secrets for the last time, for after a lady is married you can't be too careful about telling her your secrets; and early this morning I ran over and saw her dressed in a pretty blue kimono, which set off her good looks greatly, down by the woodpile which they keep in the side yard. There is a hedge of honeysuckle which runs between the garden and the yard and she appeared to be searching on the ground for something close to this hedge. I went up to where she was, admiring her company, and she smiled when she saw me.

"Ann," she said, very pleasantly, "can you help me find two nice, little, smooth, thin boards?"

I complimented her on her kimono and said yes'm to the board question, then asked her what she wanted with them.

"My knees," she answered laughing, "they're so idiotic that when I get excited they threaten to let me drop. If I could strap two nice little boards to them, at the back, you know, it would prop them up and be _such_ a help!"

"You couldn't walk very good," I told her, but she said oh, yes she could; and to prove it she commenced whistling the wedding march and walking stiff-kneed away from the woodpile to the tune of it. She looked so funny that I started to laugh, when just then I heard another laugh on the other side of the honeysuckle vines. I found a place where I could peep through and saw it was Julius and Mr.

Macdonald who had come out to view Mr. Clayborne's hotbeds, and greatly complimenting them, Julius knowing that it's a fine thing to stay on the good side of your father-in-law in case you lose your job.

I knew they heard what Miss Cis had said, for they were laughing very hard, which caused Mr. Macdonald to look real young, being as his eyes can twinkle. I knew it would be mortifying for her to see that they had heard her, so I hollered and told her that I heard Marcella calling her from the up-stairs window, so she ran right on in without coming back to the woodpile. I started to go on after her, but just as I got to the kitchen door I remembered that I had left my pretty white sunbonnet that Mammy Lou had freshly ironed for me on the woodpile and ran back to get it.

Julius and Mr. Macdonald were right where they were, only looking in the other direction and talking very seriously, so I stayed a minute out of friendly interest.