Apron-Strings

Excerpt

APRON-STRINGS

CHAPTER I

"I tell you, there's something funny about it, Steve,—having the wedding out on that scrap of lawn." It was the florist who was speaking. He was a little man, with a brown beard that lent him a professional air. He gave a jerk of the head toward the high bay-window of the Rectory drawing-room, set down his basket of smilax on the well-cared-for Brussels that, after a disappearing fashion, carpeted the drawing-room floor, and proceeded to select and cut off the end of a cigar.

"Something wrong," assented Steve. He found and filled a pipe.

The other now dropped his voice to a whisper. "'Mrs. Milo,' I says to the old lady, 'give me the Church to decorate and I'll make it look like something.' 'My good man,' she come back,—you know the way she talks—'the wedding will be in the Close.'"

"A stylish name for not much of anything," observed Steve. "The Close!
Why not call it a yard and be done with it?"

"English," explained the florist. "—Well, I pointed out that this room would be a good place for the ceremony. I could hang the wedding-bell right in the bay-window. But at that, click come the old lady's teeth together. 'The wedding will be in the Close,' she says again, and so I shut my mouth."

"Temper."

"Exactly. And why? What's the matter with the Church? and what's the matter with this room?—that they have to go outdoors to marry up the poor youngsters. What's worse, that Close hasn't got the best reputation. For there stands that orphan basket, in plain sight——"

"It's no place for a wedding!"

"Of course not!—a yard where of a night poor things come sneaking in——"

A door at the far end of the long room had opened softly. Now a voice, gentle, well-modulated, and sorrowfully reproving, halted the protesting of the florist, and paralyzed his upraised finger. "That will do," said the voice.

What had frozen the gesture of his employer only accelerated the movements of Steve. Recollecting that he was in his shirt-sleeves, he snatched the pipe from his mouth, seized upon the smilax basket, and sidled swiftly through the door leading to the Close.

"Goo—good-morning, Mrs. Milo," stammered the florist, putting his cigar behind his back with one large motion that included a bow. "Good-afternoon. I've just brought the festoons for the wedding-bower." Once more he jerked his head in the direction of the bay-window, and edged his way toward it a step or two, his fluttering eyelids belieing the smile that divided his beard.

Mrs. Milo, her background the heavy oak door that led to the library, made a charming figure as she looked down the room at him. She was a slender, active woman, who carried her seventy years with grace. Her hair was a silvery white, and so abundant that it often gave rise to justified doubt; now it was dressed with elaborate care. Her eyes were a bright—almost a metallic—blue. Despite her age, her face was silkily smooth, and as fair as a girl's, having none of those sallow spots which so frequently mar the complexions of the old....