“I can’t imagine it! But of course I haven’t your voice.” Unconsciously Lorraine glanced out the window and across the road to where, sinking into comfortable ruin, stood a tottering old box-car wagon, the one in which Thurley had travelled all the way from Boulder, Colorado!
“I wish Philena were here, she’d have so loved a wedding,” Thurley said presently, “and Granny wouldn’t be so lonesome. Did I tell you that Dan says she’s to have his old rooms at the hotel, unless she’ll live with us? She says she won’t, so, of course, the other way is easy and lovely for her.”
“He’s very generous,” Lorraine sighed. She held out her parcel. “It is just a well-wisher, as we say,” she added. “Nothing, of course, like your other things will be, but I made it myself and perhaps you will like it because of that.”
Lorraine had embroidered faint dreams and hopes of some day using the set in her house—and Dan Birge’s—into the pattern. She had many such trifles tucked away in a chest of walnut drawers.
“You’re a dear—I’m so clumsy with a needle—and it is beautiful!” Thurley said as she opened the package. “Just fancy you doing all this! Oh, Lorraine, I’ve told Dan, so many times, ‘You ought to marry Lorraine instead of me—she’d make you such a good wife.’ But men don’t pay any attention to common sense when they’re in love,” she rattled on.
“Did you, really?” Lorraine put her little hand on Thurley’s sleeve.
Thurley turned to look thoughtfully at her small guest. “Well,” she began awkwardly, “he said that he just happened to love me. I suppose it’s that way lots of times—people love certain people whether it’s best or not. When you come to see me, this set shall be in the best room I have—truly. And I want you to teach me lots of things you know—cooking and sewing and how always to be even tempered. Why, I’m cross as a witch one minute and jolly as a gypsy the next, and I do want to make him happy!” There was an earnest catch in her voice. “He’s been so good to me—I’ve nothing to offer him but myself.”
“That is all he wants,” Lorraine made herself answer, reaching for her hat. “Are you going to sing any other place besides church?”
“I think so; Dan thinks not. After all, if you have some one who loves you very much and is always willing to listen to you sing, I suppose you ought to do as he says.”