What I wanted to say was that you have so many charming dresses, that we may consider ourselves independent of Madame Mortimer.  If her things should be late, they will come in very usefully afterwards.  I don’t want to be selfish or inconsiderate, my own dearest girlie, but it would be rather too much if we allowed my tailor or your dressmaker to be obstacles to our union.  I just want you—­your dainty little self—­if you had only your ‘wee coatie,’ as Burns says.  Now look here!  I want you to bring your influence to bear upon your mother, and so make a small change in our plans.  The earlier we can have our honeymoon, the more pleasant the hotels will be.  I do want your first experiences with me to be without a shadow of discomfort.  In July half the world starts for its holiday.  If we could get away at the end of this mouth, we should just be ahead of them.  This month, this very month!  Oh, do try to manage this, my own dearest girl.  The 30th of June is a Tuesday, and in every way suitable.  They could spare me from the office most excellently.  This would just give us time to have the banns three times, beginning with next Sunday.  I leave it in your hands, dear.  Do try to work it.

St. Albans, June 4th.

My Dearest Frank,—­We nearly called in the doctor after your dear old preposterous letter.  My mother gasped upon the sofa while I read her some extracts.  That I, the daughter of the house, should be married in my old black and white tennis-dress, which I wore at the Arlingtons’ to save my nice one!  Oh, you are simply splendid sometimes!  And the learned way in which you alluded to my alpaca.  As a matter of fact, it’s a merino, but that doesn’t matter.  Fancy your remembering my wardrobe like that!  And wanting me to wear them all for years!  So I shall, dear, secretly, when we are quite quite alone.  But they are all out of date already, and if in a year or so you saw your poor dowdy wife with tight sleeves among a roomful of puff-shouldered young ladies, you would not be consoled even by the memory that it was in that dress that you first . . . you know!

As a matter of fact, I must have my dress to be married in.  I don’t think mother would regard it as a legal marriage if I hadn’t, and if you knew how nice it will be, you would not have the heart to interfere with it.  Try to picture it, silver-grey—­I know how fond you are of greys—­a little white chiffon at neck and wrists, and the prettiest pearl trimming.  Then the hat en suite, pale-grey lisse, white feather and brilliant buckle.  All these details are wasted upon you, sir, but you will like it when you see it.  It fulfils your ideal of tasteful simplicity, which men always imagine to be an economical method of dressing, until they have wives and milliners’ bills of their own.