Between the Flowers: A Novel

Chapter 9

· 9 · DORIE REFLECTIVELY scratched her head with a knitting needle, and stared at her stockinged feet propped on a stick ofwood in the bake oven, while she considered the problem at hand. She turned and looked over her shoulder at Katy who sat by the kitchen table. "I don't think you'd better write up th' weddin'," she said. "Delph's Uncle John might get hold a th' paper. How'd he like it, me same as braggin' through th' paper I'd helped in Delph's runaway?" Katy gave the answer she gave to all opinions ofher mother with which she disagreed, a loud wailing of "A-w-w, Mama," and a tossing back of her hair. She turned to Delph sitting on the other side of the table with her back to Dorie. "Wouldn't you like it, Delph?-Delph, you gone to sleep?" Delph glanced away from the snow falling thickly past the window , and asked with a confused smile, "Wouldn't I like what? I guess I was wool gatherin'." Katy laughed, and Dorie counted three purled stitches then said, "You mean you're thinkin' a Marsh. He'll be back, never you fear, tonight at th' latest. Just b"fore Christmas like this there's maybe a rush on th' tobacco market, an' they couldn't sell right away." "Last year Angus was gone better'n a week," Katy reminded her mother, and then catching the stricken look in Delph's eyes, turned back to her plea for news. "Aw, Mama, I'll need some news. Why, I've hardly got anything to write, an' I fixed th' weddin' up so pretty like an' all." "It was a pretty weddin' to begin with," Dorie said with a softness uncommon in her voice, and looked at Delph until Delph 119 BETWEEN THE FLOWERS forgot her hunger and loneliness for Marsh in fearing that Dorie was going to burst into tears as she had done at the wedding. "That's why I'm goin' to put it in th' paper," Katy said, and sprang up to read what she had written. "'On Saturday of last week the Fairchild home was the scene of what your correspondent hopes will be a long and fruitful union. Miss Delphine Costello, late of Costello, Kentucky, was united in wedlock with Mr. Marshal Gregory, known in this community. The bride was beautifully dressed in a flowing white gown, and carried a sheaf of late blooming chrysanthemums.'-I'd like to say somethin' about how nice Marsh looked. I'd never seen him in a real suit before, but in city papers they never say a word about th' groom an' he didn't buy a new suit anyhow.'-They were married in the large front parlor'Mama , couldn't I call it a drawing room?'-decorated with potted ferns and chrysanthemums. Brother Eli Fitzgerald who performed the ceremony remarked that in all his seventy-six years he had never seen a prettier bride.'-I'd like to say that he trimmed his beard an' had his suit pressed special, but I guess I'd better not-'Among those present were Mr. and Mrs. Higginbottom from Cedar Stump'-I ought to be truthful an' say a word about how Lizzie cried, an' how you did, too, for that matter." Dorie smoothed her knitting and looked at it. "Katy, some day you'll live to cry at weddin's. I laughed, too, when I was young like you." "Don't forget th' shower, an' say somethin' about how good ever'body was to rna," Delph suggested, anxious to get the conversation away from tears. "An' you might say, too," she went on after a moment's pondering, "that I'm awful sorry I can't take all their presents with me-to South America." She smiled a little secret smile. At last her name would maybe be in the Fincastle Outlook among the others who had gone away. "Delph, maybe you'll be-," Katy began, but stopped when Dorie turned quickly about in her chair, and frowned and shook her head at Katy, and seemed to sigh with her eyes over Delph's back. Katy looked at Delph in a troubled wondering way, the same speculative wonder in her glance that had haunted Delph all through her wedding day. Their eyes met; Katy smiled an embarrassed , worried sort ofsmile and bent hastily to her writing. Her pen [3.136.97.64] Project MUSE...