Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty

now painted green and latticed over, and its double chimneys at either end were green too. There was an open deck, never walked any more, on its roof; it was Denis's place—he had loved to read poetry there. The garden, sun-faded, went down to the dusty moat in which the big cypresses stood like towers with doors at their roots. The bank of the river was willowy and bright, wild and unraked, and the shadowy Yazoo went softly colored and lying narrow and low in the time of year.
    Aunt Primrose caught sight of them through the window of the kitchen ell, and agitatedly signaled to them that they must go round to the front door and not on any account come in at the back, and that she was caught in her boudoir cap and was ashamed.
    They waded through the side yard of mint and nodding pink and white cosmos, the two pale bird dogs licking them. Lethe flew out to help and fuss at Matthew, while Aunt Primrose—they could hear her—spread the screen doors wide. "Bless your hearts! Mercy! What all have you got there, always come loaded!" she cried. A brown thrush, nesting once again in September, flew out of the crape-myrtle tree at them and made Dabney nearly drop the wine she was carrying herself, to catch at her hair. Aunt Primrose, as if she should have known that thrush would do that, ran out with little cries—for she was the most tender-headed of the Fairchilds and could not bear for anyone to have her hair caught or endangered.
    India was allowed to go find Aunt Jim Allen, who was the deaf aunt. She was in the first place India looked, the pantry, tenderly writing out in her beautiful script the watermelon-rind-preserve labels and singing in perfect tune, "Where Have You Been, Billy Boy?" India tickled her neck with a piece of verbena.
    "WTiy, you monkey!" She was embraced.
    Then, "Dabney!" and both aunts at last clutched the bride, their voices stricken over her name.
    "We'll sit in the parlor and Lethe will bring us some good banana ice cream, that's what we'll do. (
Oh
, I was sorry when the figs left!)" said Aunt Jim Allen.
    "Then you'll have to turn straight around and start back," said Aunt Primrose.
    They went on. "You're looking mighty pretty. I declare, Dabney, if Sister Rowena had lived, I don't know what she would have said. I don't believe she could have realized it. Did you feel this way about Mary Denis Summers, Jim Allen? I didn't." In their pinks and blues they looked like two plump hydrangea bushes side by side. "She's having a baby right this minute," India put in, while Dabney was saying, "It's some of Mama's wine, and she apologizes if it's not as good as last year, and Shelley's cape—she says please don't work too hard on it and put out your eyes, but she could wear it on the
Berengaria
and wrap up. And I'm afraid we forgot the hyacinths, but we can send them by Little Uncle in the morning."
    Matthew, just now making his way in from the back, put everything down on the carpet in one heap. Both aunts immediately ran and extracted all away, with soft cries.
    "Neither Dabney nor me is scared to stay out after dark by ourselves, Aunt Primrose," India said.
    "Nonsense."
    Dabney felt as if she had not been at the Grove with her aunts since she was a little girl—all in two weeks they had gone backward in time for her. She looked at them tenderly.
    "I started you a cutting of the Seven-Sister rose the minute I heard you were going to be married," said Aunt Primrose, pointing her finger at her.
    Aunt Primrose was the youngest aunt, she was next to George, and Jim Allen had been next to Denis. They were both pretty for old maids. Aunt Primrose had almost golden hair, which she washed in camomile tea and waved on pale steel curlers which after twenty years still snapped harshly and fastened tightly, because her hair was so fine. Her skin was fine and tender as Bluet's, and it had never had the midday sun to touch it, or any sun without a hat or a parasol between her and it. Her eyes were weak,