The day but one before the wedding was one of those warm, soft days that so rarely come in May.  My windows were open, and the faint scent of springing grass and opening blossoms came in on every southern breath of wind.  Josey had brought her work over to sit beside me.  She was hemming her wedding-veil,—­a long cloud of tulle; and as she sat there, pinching the frail stuff in her fingers, and handling her needle with such deft little ways, as if they were old friends and understood each other, there was something so youthful, so unconscious, so wistfully sweet in her aspect, I could not believe her the same resolute, brave creature I had seen that night in April.

“Josey,” said I, “I don’t know how you can be willing to let Frank go.”

It was a hard thing for me to say, and I said it without thinking.

She leaned back in her chair, and pinched her hem faster than ever.

“I don’t know, either,” said she.  “I suppose it was because I ought.  I don’t think I am so willing now, Sue:  it was easy at first, for I was so angry and grieved about those Massachusetts men; but now, when I get time to think, I do ache over it!  I never let him know; for it is just the same right now, and he thinks so.  Besides, I never let myself grieve much, even to myself, lest he might find it out.  I must keep bright till he goes.  It would be so very hard on him, Susy, to think I was crying at home.”

I said no more,—­I could not; and happily for me, Frank came in with a bunch of wild-flowers, that Josey took with a smile as gay as the columbines, and a blush that outshone the “pinkster-bloomjes,” as our old Dutch “chore-man” called the wild honeysuckle.  A perfect shower of dew fell from them all over her wedding-veil.

The day of her marriage was showery as April, but a gleam of soft, fitful sunshine streamed into the little church windows, and fell across the tiny figure that stood by Frank Addison’s side, like a ray of glory, till the golden curls glittered through her veil, and the fresh lilies-of-the-valley that crowned her hair and ornamented her simple dress seemed to send out a fresher fragrance, and glow with more pearly whiteness.  Mrs. Bowen, in a square pew, sobbed, and snuffled, and sopped her eyes with a lace pocket-handkerchief, and spilt cologne all over her dress, and mashed the flowers on her French hat against the dusty pew-rail, and behaved generally like a hen that has lost her sole chicken.  Mr. Bowen sat upright in the pew-corner, uttering sonorous hems, whenever his wife sobbed audibly; he looked as dry as a stick, and as grim as Bunyan’s giant, and chewed cardamom-seeds, as if he were a ruminating animal.