Dickory, the parrot, preening her feathers, stopped for a moment to laugh sepulchrally.
"Listen to that," Sally said, "isn't she human? Well, I wish I could sit on a perch all day like a parrot, and have feathers for clothes. I am fed up on tailors and dressmakers."
She threw herself full-length on the couch, her hands over her head. "Everything is to be in the Spanish effect," she explained. "Madame says that I am the blonde Castilian type, whatever that may mean, and I'm to have a fan of lace in my hair, with the wedding veil in a mantilla drapery, and a short dress with lace flounces. Theatrical, I call it, but Madame says it will be ravissante.
She stuck her slippered feet up on the arm of the couch. "I wish I cared what I am going to wear." She turned and buried her face in a cushion.
Hildegarde went over and knelt beside her. "Sally!"
"Oh, I know I'm a fool. But I've got to go through with it."
"You haven't got to go through with it. Tell Neale."
"Do you think he'll give me up now? I'd have to fight him and fight mother, and I couldn't hold out."
"But if it means a life's unhappiness?"
"Oh, I shan't feel this way afterward. It's like taking a cold plunge. One gets hardened." She sat up, the tears still staining her cheeks. "You're a darling, Hildegarde, to care. Nobody else does."
In the days that followed, Mrs. Hulburt, Sally, and Hildegarde rushed hectically about town. Then,
