CHAPTER XX A WEDDING

AFTER the sailing of Kara and Lance, Tory Drew and Dorothy McClain would have been in truth lonely and depressed save for an approaching event which promised the keenest pleasure and excitement.

After announcing their engagement, Sheila Mason and Philip Winslow could find no adequate reason why they should go through the strain and uncertainties of a long engagement. They therefore concluded to be married early in the coming June.

The only two persons who might have objected, Sheila’s mother and father, expressed themselves as well pleased. The years Sheila had passed mourning for her soldier lover were now over and they were more than glad to find her happiness restored. The old Sheila had returned with an added sweetness and depth to her nature.

Another point in hurrying on the ceremony was the fact that the Girl Scouts might wish to return to their own evergreen cabin in227 Beechwood Forest. They were to build a new house that was to be half studio and half home, along the shores of the Connecticut River, and wished during the summer months to see it completed.

The house was to be a gift from Sheila’s parents, who had invited the bride and groom to be with them until the house was finished.

“There is only one thing that makes me object seriously to your marriage, Sheila,” Tory said one afternoon, speaking in her usual impulsive and unexpected fashion.

“Sorry, Tory! What is this one thing, by the way?” the Troop Captain inquired.

She was seated on the small step outside the evergreen cabin on an early May afternoon, her own Patrol of Girl Scouts surrounding her. Two or three of the girls had wandered off toward the woods.

Mr. Winslow had gone to New York for the day. The Scouts had been having their regular meeting at the cabin during his absence. There was a bare possibility he might return before they went back to the village.

“My one fear,” said Tory, “is you may consider that being married will interfere with your duties as a Scout Captain. If this is228 true, I shall oppose the wedding as much as I have encouraged it in the past.”

The girls laughed. The Troop Captain did not laugh, so that Tory reached out and caught her hand with a little appeal for pardon.

“Do you know, girls, I don’t take Tory’s impertinent speech in the fashion that it deserves because I have been thinking of just what her words imply. Perhaps after I am married I had best resign as your Troop Captain. In that case you would let me become a member of your Council?”

“Good gracious, no!” Margaret Hale announced decisively. “Yes, I do mean what I said, and I altogether agree with Tory Drew. If you are even contemplating ceasing to be our Captain I intend to call a secret, special meeting of your Girl Scouts to see what we can do to persuade you to change you mind in two connections: one with regard to marrying Mr. Winslow, the other with regard to deserting your Troop.”

“Moreover, we shall all utterly decline to be bridesmaids or to permit you to have a Scout wedding,” Joan Peters interrupted.

Teresa drew closer to the Troop Captain.

“Promise you will never give up your Scouts, not for years and years. By that time229 we shall all be marrying too, so that it will not matter.”

The laughter following Teresa’s little speech was not so spontaneous as usual. Tory Drew, Louise Miller and Dorothy McClain shook their heads emphatically.

“That day will never come, not for us!” they announced in chorus.

Tory arose.

The afternoon was not especially warm and she had slipped on a green coat over her Scout costume. Her red-gold hair was uncovered.

“You have not given us your promise yet, Sheila. Formally and in the name of your Scout Troop of the Eagle’s Wing I ask you to continue to be our Captain until circumstances make it impossible that you give us even a measure of your time. No one has appointed me the official spokesman, but any one who wishes may disagree with me.

“In my humble opinion, you have been the best possible Captain any group of girls have ever had the good luck to possess. You have been always one of us, and yet wiser and more just, the dearest kind of a friend and leader.”

“Bravo, Tory!” half a dozen of the other230 girls murmured, with a subdued clapping of hands.

Suddenly they became silent. Sheila Mason had not replied, but instead had covered her face with her two hands.

An instant later, when Teresa lifted them gently down, the girls were aware that her eyes had filled with tears.

“I shall continue your Troop Captain as long as you want me. No one and nothing shall interfere,” she began brokenly, with a little catch in her clear voice.

“You girls realize I never have believed that I have been able to accomplish half as much for my Girl Scouts as you have for me. You see, Tory even induced Mr. Winslow to come to live in Westhaven. It occurred to me that my marriage might offer you an opportunity to secure some one you would prefer without wounding my feelings.”

She leaned forward.

“Suppose we talk now of the wedding, if you girls will agree to remove your opposition. It is wonderful to have your interest and sympathy! I am to have eight Girl Scout bridesmaids. As Kara is not here to take her place as a member of our first Patrol, Martha Greaves will be one of us. What I wanted to231 ask is: has any one of you thought of a costume for the bridesmaids on this great occasion?”

Teresa sighed.

“Have we thought of anything else except our costumes? Why, as soon as I heard you announce your engagement, almost the next minute, before I knew you dreamed of asking us to play any part in the ceremony, I began considering what I would like to wear.”

“You mean you thought of yourself and your clothes, Teresa Peterson, and not of Miss Mason’s happiness?” Louise Miller demanded, annoyed as she so often was by Teresa’s frivolity and personal vanity.

“Oh, of course,” Teresa answered. Then aware of the slightly amused and critical atmosphere to which she was accustomed, she added in an aggrieved fashion: “Of course I wanted Sheila to be happy, but then I knew she would be. I thought of her wedding dress as well.”

With a gentleness in her manner suggesting sympathy, Miss Mason put her arm about Teresa. She was especially fond of the girl, of her soft, dusky beauty, of her childish, pleasure-loving nature. She was now and then a little afraid that Teresa might not232 always choose the right path in spite of her Girl Scout associations. For, although the other girls were fond of her, with one or two exceptions, no one of them approved or admired her character or made of her an intimate friend. She received scant praise or understanding in her own home. Her parents were plain people who had grown wealthy, but had made few changes in their method of living. Their home was large but filled with ugly, almost vulgar furniture which hurt Teresa’s finer sensibilities without her appreciating the reason. They had a number of younger children and kept no one to help. Steadfastly, in her own indolent fashion, Teresa had rebelled against the aid she was called upon to give. As a member of the Girl Scouts, she had displayed a little keener interest, but the Troop Captain realized how intensely Teresa disliked the noise and quarreling and discomfort of her surroundings. Teresa was not intellectual, she was not energetic or resourceful; yet she often announced that she wished to get away from home as soon as possible without any idea of how this was to be accomplished. Certainly she had no thought of learning to support herself as Louise Miller and Edith Linder were intending to do.

233 “I see nothing so reprehensible in Teresa’s remarks,” Miss Mason interposed reproachfully. “Of course, she must have known I should want you girls to be my bridesmaids. Well, since you are so formal, has any one thought of a pretty costume since my invitation? Tory, you are our artist. Have you an idea to suggest that is the least bit original? Of course no other wedding could ever have been what mine will be, and yet there have been other June weddings.”

Tory flushed and laughed.

“I am a worse offender than Teresa. She has confessed; I have not, and yet I behaved just as she did. I too thought of our bridesmaids’ costumes the afternoon of the engagement. Remember, we were spending the afternoon here in the cabin and the beechwoods were beginning to turn faintly green and gold.

“I dreamed then of a green-and-gold wedding. Our dresses and hats to be of pale green, with wreaths of deeper green and bronze leaves. In our hands we could carry little branches of beech leaves from our own forest, with golden roses.”

“Then, Sheila in white would be like summer approaching in white mist.” Teresa234 announced. An original flight of fancy was unusual for her.

“I think your idea is lovely, Tory, and it is unique. Suppose we talk it over again,” Miss Mason answered.

“It is late. We must not stay longer; we have a long walk back to the village.”

“I thought you wished to see Mr. Winslow before we returned and that we were waiting for him,” Dorothy McClain remarked in her direct fashion.

The Troop Captain shook her head.

“No—yes—well, of course I should like to see him, but not to the extent of keeping you girls out of doors later than we should stay.

“Suppose we pack up our possessions and move in regular marching order. We shall arrive the sooner.”

A half mile away a tall masculine figure joined the little procession. Side by side with the Troop Captain he led the way back to Westhaven.