herself still standing there in the Dutch wedding gown answering “I do” in the proper place.
The wedding gifts were few. The Pools had given them a “hanging lamp,” coveted of the farmer’s wife; a hideous atrocity in yellow, with pink roses on its shade and prisms dangling and tinkling all around the edge. It was intended to hang suspended from the parlour ceiling, and worked up and down on a sort of pulley chain. From the Widow Paarlenberg came a water set in red frosted glass shading to pink—a fat pitcher and six tumblers. Roelf’s gift, the result of many weeks’ labour in the work-shed, was a bride’s chest copied from the fine old piece that had saved Selina’s room from sheer ugliness. He had stained the wood, polished it. Had carved the front of it with her initials—very like those that stood out so boldly on the old chest upstairs—S. P. D. And the year—1890. The whole was a fine piece of craftsmanship for a boy of thirteen—would not have discredited a man of any age. It was the one beautiful gift among Selina’s clumsy crude wedding things. She had thanked him with tears in her eyes. “Roelf, you'll come to see me often, won’t you? Often!” Then, as he had hesitated, “I'll need you so. You're all I’ve got.” A strange thing for a bride to say.
“I’ll come,” the boy had said, trying to make his voice casual, his tone careless. “Sure, I’ll come oncet in a while.”
“Once, Roelf. Once in a while.”
He repeated it after her, dutifully.
