Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/154

 Jamie thought it over and then he selected an extremely good-looking gray silk shirt and a dull-blue tie. He looked at his own trousers critically. He had slept in them and given them rough usage, and he had worked in them some. They were not suitable trousers for a bridegroom. He was so near the Bee Master’s height and build that a pair of gray ones he found stretched in the long drawer of a highboy were exactly right. He went on searching, and by and by he had the bed almost covered with clothing that appealed to Jamie as eminently suitable for an honest-to-goodness bridegroom.

Then he went to his bath, and when he managed the fresh dressings on his left breast, he hesitated over the antiseptics—and omitted them. He would not go to his bride even with a taint of medicinal odour about him. Since she smelled of flowers herself, he would emulate the example of the greatest beau the world has ever known by having the odour that emanated from him merely that of fresh linen, of utter cleanliness.

At heart Jamie was a gentleman. When he locked the front door and started down the walk for the short trip to the trolley line which ended a few rods away, he was as white of face and hands as his condition warranted. Otherwise, he was an attractive gentleman. He carried his head at a high angle. He squared his shoulders, as much military training had required. He stepped out in the Master’s best shoes and gray trousers and black coat, in his gray silken shirt and his dull-blue tie and a soft broad-brimmed black hat; he stepped out habited as it was