Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/163

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A NEW KIND OF WEDDING
147

order to use the speediest opportunity to escape him. She had gone away Mrs. James Lewis MacFarlane with the necessary credentials and the ring he had produced at the proper moment for a finger that had hesitated to receive it; now he was left standing on the sidewalk and the best thing for him to do was to see how soon he could reach home and restore the Bee Master’s wardrobe to its accustomed place. He had been a bridegroom and there was nothing to it, not even “Thank you.” If he wanted to extract any romance whatever, he would have to get it from the salty kisses that had swept his face the previous night. And, being honest, he had to admit that if the rock upon which they had sat had been the means of the girl’s salvation, she probably would have kissed it with as much, or possibly more, enthusiasm.

Jamie stood on the sidewalk and waited for his knees to stiffen slightly before he began searching for the car he required to carry him back to the garden of the bees. When he found it and boarded it and sank into a seat, he said to all and sundry: “Well, of all the darned weddings!” He knew that he said it because he heard the words, but nobody else seemed to have heard them because everybody was interested in their papers and their friends and where they were going.

So Jamie went back to the house and returned the borrowed raiment and assumed his own. Then he went out in the sunshine and sat down to think things over. He had half a mind to tell Margaret Cameron that this was his wedding day and she might prepare him any kind