The Debtor Part 28

"We shall have to go to a dressmaker in Banbridge. We have never had any work done here, and there can be no difficulty about it."

"But, Anna, how can we have her married with a trousseau made in Banbridge?"

"It is either that or no trousseau at all."

Mrs. Carroll seldom wept, but she actually shed a few tears over the prospect of a shabbily made trousseau for Ina. "And she will go in the best society in Kentucky, too," she said, pitifully. "They'll attribute it all to the lack of taste in the North," Anna said.

Ina herself made no objection whatever to employing the Banbridge dressmaker; in fact, she seemed to have little interest in her clothes at first. After a while she became rather feverishly excited over them.

"I have always wondered why girls cared so much about their wedding-clothes," she told her sister after two weeks, when the preparations were well under way, "but now I know."

"Why?" asked Charlotte. The two were coming home from the dressmaker's, where Ina had been trying on gowns for an hour. It was late in the afternoon and nearly time for Captain Carroll's train.

"Why?" repeated Charlotte, when Ina did not answer at once.

"In order to keep from thinking so much about the marriage itself,"

said Ina, tersely. She did not look at her sister, but kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead of her.

Charlotte, however, almost stopped. "Ina," said she, in a distressed tone--"Ina, dear, you don't feel like that?"

"Why not?" inquired Ina, defiantly.

"Oh, Ina, you ought not to get married if you feel like that!"

"Why not? All girls feel like that when they are going to be married.

They must."

"Oh, Ina, I know they don't!"

"How do you know? You were never going to get married."

That argument was rather too much for Charlotte, but she continued to gaze at her sister with a shocked and doubtful air as they walked along the shady sidewalk towards home. "I am almost sure it isn't right for a girl to feel so, anyhow," she said, persistently.

"Yes, it is, too," Ina said, laughing easily. "Charlotte, honey, I really think my things are going to do very well. I really think so.

That tan canvas is a beauty, and so is the red foulard. She is really a very good dressmaker."

"I think so too, dear," Charlotte agreed. "I like the wedding-gown, too."

"Yes, so do I; it is very pretty, though that does not so much matter."

"Why, Ina Carroll!"

Ina laughed mischievously. "Now I have shocked you, dear. Of course it matters in one way, but I shall never wear it again after the ceremony; and you know I don't care much about the Banbridge people, and they will be the only ones to see me in it, and only that once."

"But, Ina, he--your--Major Arms."

Ina laughed again. "Oh, well, he thinks me perfectly beautiful anyway," said she, in the tone of one to whom love was as dross because of the superabundance of it.

"Ina," said Charlotte, with a solemn and timidly reflective air, "I don't believe you think half as much of him as you would if he didn't think so much of you."

"Yes, I do think just as much," said Ina, "but things always seem worth rather more when they are in a showcase and marked more than one can ever pay." Then she started, and exclaimed: "Good gracious, there he is now!" She flushed all over her face and neck; then she turned pale and cast a half-wild look around her as if she wanted to run somewhere.

Indeed, at that moment the Carroll carriage drew up beside them, and on the back seat sat Captain Carroll and a very handsome man apparently about his own age, although at first glance he looked older because of snow-white hair and mustache. He was as tall as Carroll, and thinner, and less punctiliously attired, although he wore his somewhat slouching clothes with a certain careless a.s.surance of being the master of them which Carroll, with all his elegance, did not excel.

"Here we are!" called Carroll. He was smiling, although he had a slightly worried look. The other man's black eyes were fixed with a sort of tender hunger on Ina, who hung back a little as she and Charlotte approached the carriage. It was actually Charlotte who shook hands first with Major Arms, although she tried to give her sister precedence.

Ina blushed a good deal, and smiled rather tremulously when her turn came and her little hand was enveloped in the man's eager one.

"I--didn't know--I didn't--" she stammered.

"No, you didn't, did ye, honey?" said the major, in the broadest of Southern drawls. "No, ye didn't. The old fellow thought he'd surprise ye, honey." The man's face and voice were as frankly expressive of delighted love as a boy's. "Arthur," said he, "over with ye to the front seat and let me have my sweetheart in here with me. I want my arms around her. Not another minute can I wait. Over with ye, boy!"

Carroll threw open the carriage door and sprang out. "Jump in, Ina,"

he said, and placed a hand under his daughter's arm. She gave a smiling and not altogether unhappy, but still piteous, look at him, and hung back slightly. "Jump in, dear," he said, again; and Ina was in the carriage, and there was a sweep of a long gray-clad arm around her and the sound of kisses.

"Now, Charlotte," said Carroll, "get in the front seat. I will walk the rest of the way."

"No, papa," Charlotte replied, "I will walk with you. I would rather." So the carriage rolled on, and Charlotte and Carroll followed on foot.

"Did you expect him, papa?" asked Charlotte.

"No, honey. The first thing I knew he came up to me on the ferry. He came on this morning; he has been in New York all day. I guess he wanted to buy something for Ina."

"Her ring?" asked Charlotte, in a slightly awed tone.

"Very likely."

"Papa, is Major Arms rich?" asked Charlotte.

"Quite, I think, dear. I don't know how much he has in reality, but he has his pay from the government--he is on the retired list--and he owns considerable property. He has enough and to spare, there is no doubt about that."

"So if Ina has things and people trouble her for payment she can pay them," remarked Charlotte, thoughtfully.

"Yes," said Carroll, shortly. He quickened his pace, and Charlotte made a little run to get into step again.

"That will be very nice," said she. "Do you think he will be good to her, papa?"

"Sure as I am of anything in this world, dear."

"It would be dreadful if he wasn't. Whatever else Ina or any of us haven't had, we've always had that. We've always lived with folks that loved us and were good to us. That would kill Ina and me quickest of anything, papa."

"He will be good to her, dear," said Carroll, pleasantly. He looked down at Charlotte and laughed. "It's all right, baby," he said.

"She's got one man in a thousand--one worth a thousand of your old dad."

"No, she hasn't," said Charlotte, with indignation. She caught her father's arm and clung to it lovingly. "There is n.o.body in the world so good as you," said she, with fervor. "I wouldn't leave you for any man in the world, papa."

"You wait," Carroll said, laughing.