That famous wedding came off yesterday afternoon. There were fifteen
invited. I do wish I had time to tell you all about it. Mother made a
real wedding-cake. Georgie has hardly slept a wink for a week, I do
believe, thinking about it. The young soldier wore his epaulets, having
been made General the day before. The bride was dressed in pure white,
of course, with a long veil, of course, too, and orange blossoms, real
orange blossoms that I made myself. The presents were spread out on the
baby-house table. Perhaps you don’t know that Georgie has a baby-house.
It is made of a sugar-box, set up on end papered with housepaper inside,
and brown outside. It has a down below, an up stairs, and garret. I do
wish I had time to tell you all about the wedding, but Matilda’s a
churning, and I promised to part the butter and work it over, if she
would fetch it. I do wish you could hear her singing away,--
“Come, butter, come! come, butter, come!
Peter stands at the gate, waiting for his buttered cake.
Come, butter, come!”
Besides the baby-house table, the presents were laid on the roof of the
baby-house. There were sontags, shoes, hats and feathers, and all sorts
of clothes, the rosebud, your jewelry, and more besides, also spoons,
dishes, gridirons, vases and everything they could possibly want, to
keep house with, even to flatirons and a cooking-stove. The hands of the
happy couple were fastened together, and they stood up (there was a pile
of books behind them). Then the trouble was, who should be the minister?
At last we saw that funny Dicky Willis, your old crony, peeping in the
window, and made him come in and be the minister. He was just the right
one for it. He charged the bridegroom to give his wife everything she
asked for, and keep her in dry kindlings, and let her have her own way,
and always wipe his feet, and not smoke in the house, and never find
fault; and charged her to sew on his buttons, and have plum-pudding
often, and let him smoke in the house, and never want any new clothes,
and always mind her husband, and let him bring in mud on his feet, and
always have a smiling face, even if the baby-house was a burning down
over their heads, and then pronounced them man and wife. I could fill up
half a dozen sheets of paper, if I had time, but I’m afraid of that
butter. Everybody shook hands with them, and kissed them, and the
wedding-cake was passed round, and then the children played
“Little Sally Waters, sitting in the sun,
Crying and weeping for her lost one.”
In the midst of everything Tommy came in with Georgiana’s atlas, and
said he’d found “two kick-cases.” He meant those two black hemispheres,
that are pictured out in the beginning. Mother put a raisin in his
mouth, and hushed him up. The happy couple have gone on a wedding tour
to Susie Snow’s grandmother’s _country_ _seat_. It is expected that they
will live half the time with Georgie, and half at the General’s
head-quarters. But their plans may be altered; this is a changing world,
and a young couple can’t always tell what’s before them. I do wish you’d
write how you get on at dancing-school, and what the great girls wear,
about my age. O dear what an age it is! ’T is dreadful to think of!
’Most eighteen! Did you ever hear of anybody being so old? Now truly I’m
’most ashamed to own how old I am. Eighteen next month! Hush, don’t
tell! Keep it private! I do wish I could grow backwards, and grow back
into a baby-house if ’t were nothing but a sugar-box. I do long to cut
my hair off and go in a long-sleeved tier, and I’ve a good mind to. We
don’t think you made a very good beginning. Guess your Mr.--I can’t
think of his name--thought there was need enough of your learning to
enter a room. Mother’s going to put a note in this letter. I’ve made her
promise not to scold you, but she’s got something particular to say.
Father will too. I told him ’t would be just what you would like, one of
his letters. Matilda says the butter has sent word it’s coming. Write
soon.
From your affectionate Cousin,