The Red Book Magazine/Volume 5/Number 3/According to Calendar

Little Sidney Marsh was glowing with the enthusiasm of the born bargain hunter, because, for some unexplained reason, he had been able to purchase for three copper cents an article for which he had fully expected to disburse an entire silver quarter.

This article was a calendar to be presented as a birthday gift to the loveliest young woman of his acquaintance. Nine-year old Sidney, however, did not consider the calendar, in its original state, sufficiently embellished for so charming person as his dear Miss Helen; so, in order to make it more fitting, he further adorned its already somewhat too gorgeous exterior with scrap-book pictures, before carrying it, proudly, to the lady he admired.

“It's perfectly lovely,” cried pretty Helen, kissing Sidney on both of his round, red cheeks. “I'll toss this old dusty one right into the fire, and every day when I look at this beautiful new one hanging in its place, I'll think of you.”

“I knew you'd like it,” returned Sidney, squirming delightedly. “You won't use any other, will you, Miss Helen?”

“Of course I won't,” promised Helen, lightly. “Nobody ever believes the dates I put on my letters anyway; but after this, I'll take them all from your calendar, Sidney, and then everybody will see a great improvement. See, I've hung it right over my desk.”

It is quite probable that somewhere on the globe there existed another mortal with as happy a disposition as Helen's; but in her own little circle the girl was unique. Her brown eyes beamed perpetual contentment, her lips lent themselves readily to laughter and she sounded quite as cheerful as she looked. Her voice, not particularly strong and utterly untrained, was wonderfully sweet and absolutely true, which was fortunate for the family, because Helen sang from morning until night. Her older sister, Susan, was more of a trial; for, although her voice was stronger, she knew only one song, which was “Just as the Sun Went Down.”

Susan's sun, however, never went down as a properly conducted sun should go. Instead, it hung suspended just above the horizon for a long, breathless interval and then dropped, with a sudden crash, to land invariably in the wrong spot. Moreover, it was not unlike a contrary hen in that it never stayed set; for Susan's sun had an uncanny habit of rising again at unseasonable hours, for the sole purpose, seemingly, of going down again.

Helen was trying to live up to a theory. She held that most persons took too much heed for the morrow and left too little to chance—Helen liked things left to chance, but Susan did not. It was Susan, not Helen, who worried herself thin planning a Sunday School picnic. It was Susan, too, who had had nervous prostration after arranging a booth for a church bazaar.

“What's the use,” light-hearted Helen would ask, “of planning things so carefully? If one doesn't make plans there won't be any to gang agley—whatever that is. When I keep house I sha'n't keep saying, 'Now, to-morrow will be Monday and I must do so and so,' or 'To-morrow will be Tuesday and I must do this and that.' I shall let all my to-morrows take care of themselves.”

“Yes,” said practical Susan, “and your Sundays'll find you without any thing in the house to eat. I'd like to know where you and mother'd be if I didn't plan.”

“But you do,” returned Helen, gently. “You plan hard enough to run a whole empire in war time, instead of a modest family of three in one small cottage. Why not leave an opening for chance? Something really exciting might happen once in awhile if you did.”

It was certainly owing to the painstaking efforts of over-careful Susan that the Gridly breakfasts were served in the morning instead of at night, for nothing but the family darning was expected of Mrs. Gridly, a delightfully vague, helpless little body, who discovered one day that she had somehow changed places with her two pink babies and that they were taking care of her and the moderate income left by Nicholas Gridly.

It was really Susan, however, no longer a pink baby, but a tall, sober minded and rather plain young woman, who took care of everything and everybody; making, as Helen said, much more work of it than was really necessary Helen, of course, helped—in an emergency. Helen could always be counted on to help—but, at twenty-six, Susan was already finding gray hairs, while Helen was finding difficulty in persuading her friends to believe that she was really as much as twenty-four and engaged to be married.

The wedding day was set for the twenty-fifth of October. To Susan's consternation, haphazard Helen announced that she intended to make all arrangements for the great event herself. Susan, having small faith in her sister's ability, hoped fervently that Helen would change her mind as the time approached; but Helen, with an exalted, if somewhat mistaken idea of saving detail-loving Susan extra worry and labor, was firm.

“No,” said Helen, “it's my wedding and I'm going to do the planning—that is, what little planning there is to do. It's all nonsense to make a great big fuss getting ready for a ten minutes' ceremony. It's to be a nice, home-y, informal little affair. I want it to seem as if it had just sort of happened offhand instead of having been all tabulated and blocked out by diagrams on paper. Your white, home-made muslin frock and a grand, conventional wedding wouldn't go at all well together.”

“Still, I could do the planning”

“You could, darling Susykins, but you're not going to. If I catch you even looking as if you were planning, I'll elope.”

“But you're absolutely certain to forget something.”

“I know it, dearie, but I couldn't forget Edward, nobody could forget Dr. Breen, and here am I—what more would you want for a wedding? No, ma'am! This is my grass and you're to keep off. You see, there'll have to be enough left of you to keep house afterwards. Bless you, do you s'pose I've forgotten how you lost four nights' sleep, used up a whole lead pencil and all my best paper drawing up plans and specifications for making the family chairs go round the sewing circle, and then nearly died afterwards of chagrin because the minister came unexpectedly and had to sit on the table? I've got to save you from yourself, sweet Susan. You're not even to worry about the weather”

“But,” protested Susan, “the almanac says it's going to rain all the last half of October, and the weather bureau”

“Then I'll buy a new umbrella,” returned Helen, serenely. “So glad you mentioned it—I hadn't thought of an umbrella. Now just remember that you're to leave everything to me but the cake. I'll do all the worrying and you can do the baking—and you're not to think of that until I give you permission. Leave it all to me and we'll show people how to have a wedding that is a wedding. Above everything, I want it informal.”

Even Helen, however, had never hoped to have it as informal as it proved to be.

All through the autumn, Helen, singing happily, sewed on fluffy, lace trimmed garments, tossing them, when finished, in a fleecy pile on the spare room bed. Susan, with an anxious pucker between her brows, surreptitiously counted the completed garments and found, to her astonishment, that the supply was likely to prove adequate to the demand, even if Helen had shown a fine scorn of the conventional dozens. But this lack of system worried Susan.

“Dear me,” she lamented, when Helen came in, one day, from her shopping, with seven pairs of lisle-thread hose, “I couldn't begin my married life with seven pairs of stockings!”

“No, you dear cut-and-dried Susykins,” said Helen, hanging the fourteen dangling stockings over her arm, preparatory to carrying them upstairs, “of course you couldn't. You'd either have to give one pair away or buy five more. All my dozens contain anywhere from ten to seventeen units and my half dozens are quite as elastic.”

“But how shall you know,” queried Susan, “if you happen to lose anything?”

“That's the beauty of it—I sha'n't know. Do you imagine that I want to spend all my married life keeping those dozens intact? Not much. I'm going to keep myself bright and lovely for Edward. Do you think he wants me to greet him like this? 'Oh, Ned! I'm short one pillow-case!' or 'Oh, Ned! try, try to remember where you lost one of your handkerchiefs—there's one missing,' or 'Oh, Ned! What shall I do? There's one finger-bowl doily gone from my yellow set.'”

Helen's manner such an exact imitation of that of a certain fussy neighbor that Susan stopped worrying long enough to go into peals of laughter.

From time to time, perturbed Susan would think of things that she was certain that Helen had either forgotten or overlooked. Had Helen remembered to make sure that the clergyman would be in town for the occasion? Had it occurred to her to send a line to Aunt Loretta? Had she thought to ask Edward for the names of all his relatives, so that announcement cards would reach them? Had she decided whether she wanted olives or preserved ginger for the wedding supper, and did she know how many extra tea-spoons it would be necessary to borrow?

Indeed, so little confidence had orderly-minded Susan in her sister's ability that she even waked peacefully-slumbering Helen, one night, to ask if she had remembered to write to Edward, the prospective bridegroom, who lived at a distance, the exact date of his wedding day.

“Susan!” murmured sleepy Helen, turning her pillow with wrathful emphasis, “if there's one date that I've succeeded in impressing on everybody's mind, it's Wednesday, October 25th.”

As the time approached, everything appeared to be going smoothly. Helen, bent upon showing doubting Susan that a wedding, in spite of the popular supposition to the contrary, was the easiest form of entertainment imaginable, wore a serene brow, and her scraps of song were sweeter than ever. Although Susan's sun went down and came up again with even more alarming frequency than usual during the busy days preceding the wedding, even she finally became almost convinced that everything was coming out as well as if she herself had planned it.

Helen had suspected that there might be wedding presents and there were; but they surpassed her expectations in number, in beauty, and especially in the promptness of their arrival.

“Why!” lamented Helen, opening Aunt Loretta's spoons on Saturday, “there won't be anything left to live for except Edward, between now and next Wednesday. I think every gift I'm entitled to is already in this house. It's odd that everybody should have sent them so soon—particularly when the weather has been so outrageous. I'd swap Uncle Peter's soup ladle for a scrap of blue sky.”

“The almanac said it would rain,” returned Susan, “and I told you”

“Oh, there's the doorbell,” cried Mrs. Gridly, to whom Helen had relegated the pleasant task of arranging the gifts on various small tables. “If it's another wedding present I don't know where I'll put it.”

It was not a present, however, but a thunderbolt. Stout Mrs. Miller did not look like a thunderbolt, but she proved to be one.

“By the way, Helen,” said the visitor, when the greetings were over, “it has just occurred to me that when you invited me to your wedding”—the invitations had been given verbally—“you said Wednesday, the 25th.”

“Yes,” returned Helen, cheerfully, “I did.”

“But, Helen,” objected Mrs. Miller, “the 25th is Sunday—are you going to be married on Sunday or on Wednesday?”

“What!” gasped Helen, always a little vague as to dates. “Isn't to-day Saturday?”

“Yes; Saturday, the 24th.”

“You must be mistaken,” cried Helen, showing, in her sudden alarm, a hitherto unsuspected resemblance to Susan. “My calendar said, when I looked at it this morning, 'Saturday, the 21st.' I've just lived with that calendar for days and I know the whole month of October by heart!”

“I'm not mistaken,” persisted the visitor. “To-day's my birthday and I know it's the 24th. I guess when one's had fifty-six birthdays one gets to know when to expect 'em.”

“But the calendar”

“Let's see your calendar. Why, it does say the 21st, but bless me, girls, it can't be right—My goodness! Look at this!”

With a hairpin, investigating Mrs. Miller had pried from its place one of the little scrap-book pictures that small Sidney Marsh had inadvertently pasted over the date, 1899.

The mystery was a mystery no longer. Thanks to young Sidney and his bargain-sale purchase, the Gridly family had regulated its affairs for several of the most important weeks of its existence, by a five-year-old calendar.

“Then, when—when am I going to be married?” asked Helen, looking helplessly from her mother to Mrs. Miller and Susan. “When is my wedding day?”

“You haven't any,” said Susan.

“To-morrow,” replied Mrs. Miller, “if you go by the date; next Wednesday if you go by the day. I thought it was strange you'd choose Sunday.”

“Dear me,” groaned Helen, “what an awful mix! The ice-cream, the salad and the minister are all ordered for the 25th, and the people invited for Wednesday—no, the refreshments and Edward-why, goodness! Edward said he'd be here the afternoon of the 24th—that's to-day!”

“That looks like Edward coming up the walk now!” cried dismayed Susan, who stood facing the window. “And there's Dr. Breen right behind him!”

Quick-witted Helen rushed to the door, whisked Edward into the secluded library and left Susan to welcome the elderly clergyman, who had been more deliberate in climbing the steps—Edward, indeed, had taken them at one joyous bound.

“Ah, good afternoon, Miss Susan,” said Dr. Breen, taking Susan's small, trembling hand. “It's pleasant to see the sun trying to shine after all the rain we've been having. I just came in to have a rather curious little matter straightened out. I didn't notice it at first, but the date and the day mentioned in your sister's note do not—ah—coincide”

“Nothing coincides,” said Helen, emerging from the library, with her eyes dancing and her cheeks unduly flushed. “Do come in and tell us what to do. Edward supposed the wedding was to be Monday—it seems I didn't mention Wednesday—and my fives and always sixes do look alike.”

“Well,” suggested Dr. Breen, when everything had been explained, “I've another wedding on hand that will call me out of town next Wednesday, so you'd better arrange to have yours sooner.”

“I'm afraid I'll have to have it sooner,” faltered Helen. “That ice-cream's coming on the eight o'clock train to-night, and it won't keep for more than twenty four hours. Oh, Edward, you don't mind an informal wedding—or having it hurried up to save the ice-cream, do you?”

“Not in the least,” returned Edward, whose eyes were twinkling delightedly. “We couldn't wait until Wednesday, anyway, without shortening our wedding trip—a fortnight is all the firm would give me. I'm rather glad your fives do look like sixes.”

“Then it's all right. We'll be married to-night, instead of at noon next Wednesday—or—or to-morrow, or Monday,” said Helen, taking a roll of paper from her pocket and handing it to Susan. “Now, you go to town, Edward, and get the license—and five pounds of coffee. Susan, you go next-door and telephone half the people on this list. Mrs. Miller, if you'll telephone the rest from your house, I'll send Johnny Blake to tell those we can't reach by 'phone.”

“But, Helen!” objected Susan, her words coming in gasps, “we never—the cake isn't baked—the decorations—the dishes”

“Now, don't worry,” soothed Helen. “Everybody bakes on Saturday—I'll just borrow their cake and bread. Get a lot of the girls in to help make sandwiches and pick flowers and we'll have the finest sort of a wedding here at half-past eight, this very night. We'll stand right here in this corner where we always put the Christmas tree, and in three hours from now you won't have anything left to worry about.”

Singularly enough, Helen's hastily prepared wedding was afterwards remembered as being an exceedingly pretty, well-managed affair. Kindly neighbors took possession of the kitchen and dining room, the hardy hydrangeas in their gardens were stripped of their huge, snowy of bloom, and the willing hands of Helen's girl friends made the Christmas tree corner a bower fit for any bride. Helen herself, in her white gown, with her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright, had never looked prettier nor happier; for all the guests had been notified in time, the borrowed cakes proved adequate, and everybody—except Susan, who still looked bewildered—was satisfied.

“Never mind, precious Susykins,” whispered Helen, on the way to the train, “when your turn comes, dear, I'll plan a perfectly lovely, proper, conventional wedding that'll more than make up for all the usual plans we didn't make for this one.”

“No, you won't,” retorted Susan, with unexpected spirit. “I'll do my own planning. I don't admire the solitary sample I've seen of yours. As like as not, you'd get me married to the wrong man!”