Читать книгу Pat of Silver Bush - L. M. Montgomery - Страница 20

Table of Contents

Pat couldn’t help feeling pleasantly excited when she found that she was to be Aunt Hazel’s flower girl. But she felt so sorry for Winnie who was too old to be a flower girl and not old enough to be a bridesmaid, that it almost spoilt her own pleasure. Aunt Hazel was to have two bridesmaids and all were to be dressed in green, much to Judy’s horror, who declared green was unlucky for weddings.

“Oh, oh, there was a widding once in the Ould Country and the bridesmaids wore grane. And the fairies were that mad they put a curse on the house, that they did.”

“How did they curse it, Judy?”

“I’m telling ye. There was niver to be inny more laughter in that house ... niver agin. Oh, oh, that’s a tarrible curse. Think av a house wid no laughter in it.”

“And wasn’t there ever any, Judy?”

“Niver a bit. Plinty of waping but no laughing. Oh, oh, ’twas a sorryful place!”

Pat felt a little uneasy. What if there never were to be any more laughter at Silver Bush ... father’s gentle chuckles and Uncle Tom’s hearty booms ... Winnie’s silvery trills ... Judy’s broad mirth? But her dress was so pretty ... a misty, spring-green crepe with smocked yoke and a cluster of dear pink rosebuds on the shoulder. And a shirred green hat with roses on the brim. Pat had to revel in it, curse or no curse. She did not realise ... as Judy did ... that the green made her pale, tanned little face paler and browner. Pat as yet had no spark of vanity. The dress itself was everything.

The wedding was to be in the afternoon and the “nuptial cemetery,” as Winnie, who was a ten-year-old Mrs. Malaprop ... called it, was to be in the old grey stone church at South Glen which all the Gardiners had attended from time immemorial. Judy thought this a modern innovation.

“Sure and in the ould days at Silver Bush they used to be married in the avening and dance the night away. But they didn’t go stravaging off on these fine honeymoon trips then. Oh, oh, they wint home and settled down to their business. ’Tis the times that have changed and not for the better I do be thinking. It used to be only the Episcopalians was married in church. Sure and it’s niver been a Presbytarian custom at all, at all.”

“Are you a Presbyterian, Judy?”

Pat was suddenly curious. She had never thought about Judy’s religion. Judy went to the South Glen church with them on Sundays but would never sit in the Gardiner pew ... always up in the gallery, where she could see everything, Uncle Tom said.

“Oh, oh, I’m Presbytarian as much as an Irish body can be,” said Judy cautiously. “Sure and I cud niver be a rale Presbytarian not being Scotch. But innyhow I’m praying that all will go well and that yer Aunt Hazel’ll have better luck than yer grand-dad’s second cousin had whin she was married.”

“What happened to grand-dad’s second cousin, Judy?”

“Oh, oh, did ye niver hear av it? Sure and it seems nobody’d iver tell ye yer fam’ly history if ould Judy didn’t. She died, poor liddle soul, of the pewmonia, the day before the widding and was buried in her widding dress. ’Twas a sad thing for she’d been long in landing her man ... she was thirty if she was a day ... and it was hard to be disap’inted at the last moment like that. Now, niver be crying, me jewel, over what happened fifty years ago. She’d likely be dead innyhow be this time and maybe she was spared a lot av trouble, for the groom was a wild felly enough and was only taking her for her bit av money, folks said. Here, give me a spell stirring this cake and don’t be picking the plums out av it to ate.”