Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty Page B

the Grove—it had hung in the first little mud house; he had painted it one wintertime, showing her in a dark dress with arms folded and an expression of pure dream in the almost shyly drawn lips. There was a white Christmas rose from the new doorstep in her severely dressed hair. There were circles under her eyes—he had not been reticent there, for that was the year the yellow fever was worst and she had nursed so many of her people, besides her family and neighbors; and two hunters, strangers, had died in her arms. Shelley always thought, for some reason nobody understood, that this was why Great-Grandfather made her fold her arms and hide her hands, but India thought he could not draw hands, because she couldn't, and had not needed to try by giving her a good defiant pose. Dabney thought that Mary folded her arms because she would soon have her first child. Great-Grandfather only painted twice in his life, the romantic picture of his brother, in the library at home, and the realistic one of his wife—the two people he had in the world.
    Mary seemed to look down at her and at the dear parlor, with the foolish, breakable little things in it. How sure and how alone she looked, the eyes so tired. What if you lived in a house all alone and away from everybody with no one but your husband?
    "Dabney, where were you?" The aunts, with India holding their hands and swinging between them, came in. "Maiy Denis Summers Buchanan has come through her ordeal—very well," said Aunt Jim Allen. "Tempe just telephoned from Inverness—didn't you hear us calling you? She wanted us to tell you it was a boy."
    "I think Dabney's been eating green apples, but I feel all right," India said. Dabney stood watching them with her arms folded across herself, looking lost in wonder.
    "Dabney! Do you feel a little...? Run put back the spread and lie down on my bed." Aunt Primrose pulled her little bottle of smelling salts out of her pocket. "There's too much excitement in the world altogether," she said, with a kind of consoling, gentle fury that came on her sometimes.
    "Why, India! I feel perfect!" laughed Dabney, feeling them all looking at her. And all the little parlor things she had a moment ago cherished she suddenly wanted to break. She had once seen Uncle George, without saying a word, clench his fist in the dining room at home—the sweetest man in the Delta. It is because people are mostly layers of violence and tenderness—wrapped like bulbs, she thought soberly; I don't know what makes them onions or hyacinths. She looked up and smiled back at the gay little knowing nods of her aunts. They all sat down on the two facing sofas and had a plate of banana ice cream and some hot fresh cake and felt better.
    "Now hurry and start back," said Aunt Primrose. "Oh, you never do come, and when you do you never stay a minute! Oh—growing up, and marrying. India, you're still my little girl!" Aunt Primrose without warning kissed India rambunctiously and pulled her into her sacheted skirt.
    Aunt Jim Allen took up her needle-point and the green-threaded needle. "I'm going to give you this stool cover with the calla lily, of
course
, Dabney. I'll have it ready by the time Battle can get Marmion ready, I dare say."
    "Dabney will have to have some kind of little old wedding present from us to take home," said Aunt Primrose. "Jump up and pick you out something, honey. You take whatever you like. Don't want to see you hesitate."
    "Oh—everything's so soon now," said Dabney, jumping up. "Papa said any kind of wedding I wanted I could have, if I had to get married at all, so I'm going to have shepherdess crooks and horsehair ruffled hats."
    "Can anybody put their feet on the stool?" asked India. "Troy?"
    "Hush, dear," said Aunt Primrose softly. "We
hope
not."
    "I'm going to be coming down the stairs while Mary Lamar Mackey plays—plays something—but you'll see it all," and Dabney was walking, rather gliding, around on the