Carmencita’s wedding was fixed for July, partly because the summer, when the boys are home from school and university, is the gayest time here, but mainly because propriety demands that the religious ceremony shall take place within quite a few weeks of that known as “asking for the hand”—in other words, the signing of the marriage contract. The _noviazgo_, which is not strictly speaking an engagement, but rather a protracted courtship which may or may not end in a wedding, sometimes goes on for years and is then broken off, without any blame attaching to the jilt, be he male or female. It is quite an understood thing that there is no moral obligation to marry as long as the hand of the lady has not been formally “asked.” But once this has been done, not by the lover but by some relative of the elder generation, the marriage is regarded as the necessary consequence, and a man or woman who declined to fulfil the engagement after that ceremony had been gone through would be _mal mirado_—badly looked at—which is more or less equivalent to being sent to Coventry.
So when I heard that Carmen was finally engaged I knew it would not be long before I received an invitation to the wedding, which came in due course, printed in silver on a highly glazed card. It was not strictly speaking an invitation at all, for it merely set out at full length the names and titles of the bride and bridegroom and their parents (and Spanish names and titles are as long as a Presbyterian sermon), and announced the day and hour of the wedding without “requesting the pleasure of my company.” The opposite side of the card contained an identical announcement on the part of the bridegroom.
On the day before the wedding I went, by Carmencita’s special request, to see her trousseau, which to the Andalucian bride is even more exciting than the wedding presents.
She received me in a dainty _bata_, a garment which is a cross between a tea-gown and a pinafore, with her hair loose and falling below her waist, and her eyes were so bright and her laugh so gay that I felt sure she was as contented as were her parents with the affluent future before her. She took me to the winter reception-rooms upstairs, which looked as if they were prepared for a sale of work. On a number of tables and chairs were displayed the presents—innumerable sofa cushions, embroidered night-dress cases, crocheted table-covers, antimacassars, lace d’oyleys, and so forth; with the more solid offerings of glass, china and plate from older relatives half lost to sight among the hand-made gifts from Carmencita’s schoolfellows and girl friends.