"If she'd taken my advice," her mamma was good rnough to add, "she wouldn't have come at all. She's just ruining her career. After all the care and worry and privation I've been to to make her a success—to go and marry!"
I shall have trouble with Claudia's mamma; I saw that clearly.
And with Claudia's maid, too. (I never liked that Swedish woman, with her glacial voice and her Nibelung code of morals.)
"Madame la mère is right," she mumbled. "Monsieur weel forgive—but for the artiste to gat married—it is alvays grat meestak."
Long afterward Claudia reminded me of Telka's prophecy, just as she did of Mrs. Edgerton's elaborate "Really?"
"You do not hesitate or regret?" I whispered to her as we walked up the aisle.
"Would I have come?" she asked for reply.
What a picture she was—in her gown of white silk, with full bridal veil and, my! how many orange blossoms! Rather startling attire, of course, for such a wedding as ours—with no more of company than the circumstances compelled—and I fancied that Lattimer, who broke a half-dozen engagements at the Embassy to stand up with me, winced a bit at the incongruity.
But Claudia was still something of a child. "I shouldn't feel that I'd been properly and really married," she explained, "if I'd worn a street gown."
Her mother came resplendent in a dress of royal purple satin, with a train long enough for a court presentation. Yes, yes, I shall have trouble with Claudia's mamma.
When Lattimer felicitated her upon her daughter's happiness—and Claudia certainly gave no sign of regretting the promise she had just made—the response was freezingly reminiscent.
"Well, I hope it's for the best," she said; "but what in the world does she see in him?"
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OSMAN AGA
When the sands of night are run,
And the toilers go their ways
At the earliest peer of sun,
Osman Aga kneels and prays.
When the streets by noon are burned,
And the roof-tops scorch and blaze,
With his brow toward Mecca turned,
Osman Aga kneels and prays.
At the purple shut of eve,
When the pilgrim khan-ward strays,
With the Faithful that believe,
Osman Aga kneels and prays.
But meanwhile this wag-beard gray
Cheats the poor with spurious wares,
So one scarce knows what to say
In regard to Aga's prayers!
