Her ideas as to decoration soared far beyond Katy’s.  She hem-stitched, she cat-stitched, she feather-stitched, she lace-stitched, she tucked and frilled and embroidered, and generally worked her fingers off; while the bride vainly protested that all this finery was quite unnecessary, and that simple hems and a little Hamburg edging would answer just as well.  Clover merely repeated the words, “Hamburg edging!” with an accent of scorn, and went straight on in her elected way.

As each article received its last touch, and came from the laundry white and immaculate, it was folded to perfection, tied with a narrow blue or pale rose-colored ribbon, and laid aside in a sacred receptacle known as “The Wedding Bureau.”  The handkerchiefs, grouped in dozens, were strewn with dried violets and rose-leaves to make them sweet.  Lavender-bags and sachets of orris lay among the linen; and perfumes as of Araby were discernible whenever a drawer in the bureau was pulled out.

So the winter passed, and now spring was come; and the two girls on the doorsteps were talking about the wedding, which seemed very near now.

“Tell me just what sort of an affair you want it to be,” said Clover.

“It seems more your wedding than mine, you have worked so hard for it,” replied Katy.  “You might give your ideas first.”

“My ideas are not very distinct.  It’s only lately that I have begun to think about it at all, there has been so much to do.  I’d like to have you have a beautiful dress and a great many wedding-presents and everything as pretty as can be, but not so many bridesmaids as Cecy, because there is always such a fuss in getting them nicely up the aisle in church and out again,—­that is as far as I’ve got.  But so long as you are pleased, and it goes off well, I don’t care exactly how it is managed.”

“Then, since you are in such an accommodating frame of mind, it seems a good time to break my views to you.  Don’t be shocked, Clovy; but, do you know, I don’t want to be married in church at all, or to have any bridesmaids, or anything arranged for beforehand particularly.  I should like things to be simple, and to just happen.”

“But, Katy, you can’t do it like that.  It will all get into a snarl if there is no planning beforehand or rehearsals; it would be confused and horrid.”

“I don’t see why it would be confused if there were nothing to confuse.  Please not be vexed; but I always have hated the ordinary kind of wedding, with its fuss and worry and so much of everything, and just like all the other weddings, and the bride looking tired to death, and nobody enjoying it a bit.  I’d like mine to be different, and more—­more—­real.  I don’t want any show or processing about, but just to have things nice and pretty, and all the people I love and who love me to come to it, and nothing cut and dried, and nobody tired, and to make it a sort of dear, loving occasion, with leisure to realize how dear it is and what it all means.  Don’t you think it would really be nicer in that way?”