After dinner was over and Nurse York had gone back to her patient, they sat together talking it over joyously.
“But, Mother,” said Camilla, “I don’t see how we’re ever going to have the right kind of wedding in this tiny house with our resources. Marietta has been telling me all the afternoon what swell relatives I’m acquiring, interspersed with clippings to prove it from the newspapers, and I’m afraid they’ll feel uncomfortable here. They couldn’t all get in, either. And we haven’t a church around here that we know well enough to feel like getting married in. I wish people could just go quietly to a minister and get married. Very poor people do that. Why can’t we?”
Her troubled eyes turned toward Jeff, who met hers with a perplexed but not at all worried look.
But it was the mother who solved the problem.
“Oh, that will be easy, dear,” she said sweetly. “We’ll just go back home to Burbrook, and you can be married in the church where your father and I were married. The same minister is there yet. He was a young man then; he’s old and retired now, but he could marry you. Then you can have a little reception right there in the church afterward; that’s often done. And you know there’s a new hotel there now, a lovely place, they say. That would make plenty of room for the guests who stayed overnight. It’s not so far away, only a hundred and fifty miles. Wouldn’t that be all right?”
“That would be great!” said Jeff. “And now, Mother Chrystie, how soon do you think it could reasonably be? Camilla has so much devotion to that office that I can’t quite trust her decision, for I’m in a hurry; I’m telling my father and mother tonight, and I’d like to announce the date. Also, I want to bring them to call tomorrow.”
The wedding was fixed for June and very simply planned.
Camilla went around in a daze of joy and couldn’t believe it was anything but a dream until the wedding presents began to come in, and then she was almost in a panic. How could she ever live up to those wedding presents? They more than filled the little house and were more wonderful than any dream she had ever dreamed.
She said something to Jeff one day, and he put his arm around her and drew her close.
“You don’t have to live up to them, sweetheart. They are only things of this world,” he said, “and you and I have been born again into another world, thank God!”
But there was one wedding present that filled Camilla’s heart with thanksgiving, not because of its intrinsic value, though it was beautiful and rare and costly enough, but because of the card that accompanied it, though it was only a plain engraved card. It read, “Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Whitlock,” and down in the corner in a woman’s fine hand was written, “In Gratitude.”
The wedding was charming and the bride very lovely in her mother’s wedding dress of fine embroidered organdy with bits of real, old lace. John Saxon was there, of course, and Marietta, too, the trip and a new dress being a gift from the bride.
All Jeffrey Wainwright’s rich relatives were present and called the old church “quaint” and “darling” and said the bride was “rare,” and wasn’t it nice that she was willing to wear Jeff’s grandmother’s wedding veil?
It hung around her like frost work of old silver, and Jeffrey said it made her look like an angel. She wore real orange blossoms that John Saxon had brought. But the bridal bouquet was of white orchids!
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL (1865–1947) is known as the pioneer of Christian romance. Grace wrote over one hundred faith-inspired books during her lifetime. When her first husband died, leaving her with two daughters to raise, writing became a way to make a living, but she always recognized storytelling as a way to share her faith in God. She has touched countless lives through the years and continues to touch lives today. Her books feature moving stories, delightful characters, and love in its purest form.
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Grace Livingston Hill, The Flower Brides
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