"She looked-well, as white as this spread," agreed Virginia.
"Well, but what accounts for it!" gasped Susan. "Is Georgie CRAZY! Joe O'Connor! That snip! And hasn't he an awful old mother, or someone, who said that she'd never let him come home again if he married?"
"Listen, Sue!--You haven't heard half. It seems that they've been engaged for two months--"
"They HAVE!"
"Yes. And on Monday night Joe showed Georgie that he'd gotten the license, and they got thinking how long it would be before they could be married, what with his mother, and no prospects and all, and they simply walked into St. Peter's and were married!"
"Well, he'll have to leave his mother, that's all!" said Susan.
"Oh, my dear, that's just what they quarreled about! He WON'T."
"He--WON'T?"
"No, if you please! And you can imagine how furious that made Georgie! And when Ma told us that, she simply set her lips,--you know Ma! And then she said that she was going to see Father Birch with Georgie this afternoon, to have it annulled at once."
"Without saying a word to Joe!"
"Oh, they went first to Joe's. Oh, no, Joe is perfectly willing. It was, as Ma says, a mistake from beginning to end."
"But how can it be annulled, Mary Lou?" Susan asked.
"Well, I don't understand exactly," Mary Lou answered coloring. "I think it's because they didn't go on any honeymoon--they didn't set up housekeeping, you know, or something like that!"
"Oh," said Susan, hastily, coloring too. "But wouldn't you know that if any one of us did get married, it would be annulled!" she said disgustedly. The others both began to laugh.
Still, it was all very exciting. When Georgie and her mother got home at dinner-time, the bride was pale and red-eyed, excited, breathing hard. She barely touched her dinner. Susan could not keep her eyes from the familiar hand, with its unfamiliar ring.
"I am very much surprised and disappointed in Father Birch," said Mrs. Lancaster, in a family conference in the dining-room just after dinner. "He seems to feel that the marriage may hold, which of course is too preposterous! If Joe O'Connor has so little appreciation--!"
"Ma!" said Georgie wearily, pleadingly.
"Well, I won't, my dear." Mrs. Lancaster interrupted herself with a visible effort. "And if I am disappointed in Joe," she presently resumed majestically. "I am doubly disappointed in Georgie. My baby- -that I always trusted--!"