I'd have a weddin' an' I'd have
cake, an' I'd ask folks, especially after what's happened. I'd let
'em see I wa'n't quite so far gone, if I had set out for the
poor-house once. I'd have a weddin'. Richard's got money enough. I
had real good-luck with Rose's cake, an' I ain't afraid to try yours.
I guess I should make it a little mite stiffer than I did hers."
But Sylvia was obdurate. She did not say much, but she went her own
way. She had gained a certain quiet decision and dignity which
bewildered everybody. Her sisters had dimly realized that there was
something about her out of plumb, as it were. Her nature had been
warped to one side by one concentrated and unsatisfied desire. "Seems
to me, sometimes, as if Sylvy was kind of queer," Hannah Berry often
said. "I dunno but she's kinder turned on Richard Alger," Sarah would
respond. Now she seemed suddenly to have regained her equilibrium,
and no longer slanted doubtfully across her sisters' mental horizons.
She and Richard went to the minister's house early one Sabbath
morning, and were married. Then they went to meeting, Sylvia on
Richard's arm. They sat side by side in the Alger pew; it was on the
opposite side of the meeting-house from Sylvia's old pew. It seemed
to her as if she would see her old self sitting there alone, as of
old, if she looked across. She fixed her eyes straight ahead, and
never glanced at Richard by her side.
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