The Beloved Stranger - By Grace Livingston Hill Page 0,1

and she laughed a bright little trill full of joyous anticipation.

“You poor lamb!” said the older woman with sudden yearning in her voice; the old, anticipating and pitying the trials of the young. “I do hope he’ll be good to you.”

“Be good to me!” exclaimed Sherrill happily. “Who? Carter? Why, of course, Gemmie. He’s wonderful to me. He’s almost ridiculous he’s so careful of me. I’m just wondering how it’s going to be to have someone always fussing over me when I’ve been on my own for so many years. Why, you know, Gemmie, these last six months I’ve been with Aunt Pat are the first time I’ve had anybody who really cared where I went or what I did since my mother died when I was ten years old. So you don’t need to worry about me. There, now, you’ve spread that train out just as smooth as can be; please go at once. I’m getting very nervous about you, really, Gemmie!”

“But I’ll be needed, Miss Sherry, to help you down to the car when it comes for you.”

“No, you won’t, Gemmie. Just send that little new maid up to the door to knock when the car is ready. I can catch up my own train and carry it perfectly well. I don’t want to be preened and spread out like a peacock. It’ll be bad enough when I get to the church and have to be in a parade. Truly, Gemmie, I want to be alone now.”

The woman reluctantly went away at last, and Sherrill locked her door and went back to her mirror, watching herself as she advanced slowly, silver step after silver step, in time to the softly hummed wedding march. But when she was near to the glass, Sherrill’s eyes looked straight into their own depths long and earnestly.

“Am I really glad,” she thought to herself, “that I’m going out of myself into a grown-up married person? Am I perfectly sure that I’m not just a bit frightened at it all? Of course Carter McArthur is the handsomest man I ever met, the most brilliant talker, the most courteous gentleman, and I’ve been crazy about him ever since I first met him. Of course he treats me just like a queen, and I trust him absolutely. I know he’ll always be just the same graceful lover all my life. And yet, somehow, I feel all of a sudden just the least bit scared. Does any girl ever know any man perfectly?”

She looked deep into her own eyes and wondered. If she only had a mother to talk to these last few minutes!

Of course there was Aunt Pat. But Aunt Pat had never been married. How could Aunt Pat know how a girl felt the last few minutes before the ceremony? And Aunt Pat was on her way to the church now. She was all crippled up with rheumatism and wanted to get there in a leisurely way and not have to get out of the car before a gaping crowd. She had planned to slip in the side door and wait in the vestry room till almost time for the ceremony and then have one of her numerous nephews, summoned to the old house for the occasion to be ushers, bring her in. Aunt Pat wouldn’t have understood anyhow. She was a good sport with a great sense of humor, but she wouldn’t have understood this queer feeling Sherrill was experiencing.

When one stopped to think of it, right on the brink of doing it, it was a rather awful thing to just give your life up to the keeping of another! She hadn’t known Carter but six short months. Of course he was wonderful. Everybody said he was wonderful, and he had always been so to her. Her heart thrilled even now at the thought of him, the way he called her “Beautiful!” bending down and just touching her forehead with his lips, as though she were almost too sacred to touch lightly. The way his hair waved above his forehead. The slow way he smiled, and the light that came in his hazel eyes when he looked at her. They thrilled her tremendously. Oh, there wasn’t any doubt in her mind whatsever that she was deeply in love with him. She didn’t question that for an instant. It was just the thought of merging her life into his and always being a part of him. No, it wasn’t that either, for that thrilled her,