Chapter 1

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_Title:_ Miss Julianna’s Wedding Dress
_Date of first publication:_ 1905
_Author:_ L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery (1874-1942)
_Date first posted:_ Mar. 13, 2017
_Date last updated:_ Mar. 13, 2017
Faded Page eBook #20170321

This ebook was produced by: Alex White & the online Distributed
Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

Miss Juliana’s Wedding Dress
L. M. Montgomery
First published in _New Idea Woman’s Magazine_, September 1905.

Jean was making her wedding-dress, a thing of fine sheer white organdy
and cobweb lace, just such a dress as she had dreamed of having ever
since the day that Martin Reed had put the little ring, with its three
blue turquoises, on her slender brown finger.

The dress stood for a good deal of extra economy and a bit of
self-sacrifice on the part of the father and mother. Jean knew this and
knew that the love so woven into fabric and seam was in itself the
finest and most precious of bridal adornments. Her heart sang with joy
as she hemmed the froth-like ruffles, and no hint of the gloom of the
autumn day crept in to shadow it. To Jean, the world was all springtime.

Mrs. Milman, passing by, stopped and touched the dress gently.

“Deary me, isn’t it pretty?” she said wistfully. “Seems to me such stuff
couldn’t be meant for wearing any more than moonshine. I’m real glad we
made out to manage it. Your father thought at first that it was kind of
foolish to spend money on a white dress when money was so scarce and you
needed so many other things. But I stood firm. I remember when I was
married I wanted a white dress, too; but they all said it was such
foolishness that I gave it up and was married in my brown silk. But do
you know, Jean, I’ve had a hankering for that white dress ever since. So
I was determined you should have yours. It seemed to me that it would
satisfy my own old wish, to see you married in a white dress. Deary me,
there’s Miss Juliana coming across the field. Mattie, run to the front
door and bring her in that way. I wouldn’t have her see the back porch,
all littered up as it is with excelsior, for the world.”

Mattie flew to the front door while Jean hurriedly gathered up her
ruffles.

“Mother, help me get these out of sight. Miss Juliana mustn’t see the
dress. She is such an old gossip and pry. It would be talked over in
every house in Brightwood in a week and I should feel that like a
desecration. And she’d poke it about with her little claws and peer into
the stitches.”

The white dress was safely out of the way before Miss Juliana came in.
Perhaps she suspected something, for her sharp black eyes did not fail
to notice a snip of organdy on the carpet and a white thread clinging to
Jean’s dress. But she said nothing about it, although she prolonged her
call unreasonably and talked gossip until Jean almost lost her patience.
To be sure, poor Miss Juliana’s gossip was always harmless enough; but
Jean detested all gossip.

So Miss Juliana had to go home without having been taken into Jean’s
confidence.

“It wouldn’t have hurt her to have showed me her things,” whispered Miss
Juliana resentfully, as she fumbled about to unlock her door, blinder by
reason of a few stinging tears in her eyes than by the falling dusk.
“I’ve been fond of Jean ever since she was a baby and I’ve been in and
out over there almost every day of my life. They needn’t treat me like a
stranger. I do hate for folks to be so close.”

But neither Miss Juliana nor anyone else in Brightwood was destined to
see that white dress of Jean’s. On the day that it was finished Jean
laid it carefully on the “spare-room” bed; and that night
fifteen-year-old Mattie went into the spare-room to curl her hair for
prayer meeting.

Mattie was inclined to be absent-minded. She was pondering deeply
whether to dress her hair in the Cadogan braid, as Millie Jones wore it,
or turn it up over her head like the stylish Patterson girls at the
Center; and when she lighted her lamp she gave a little “pouf” at the
match and tossed it carelessly away—another habit of hers. The next
moment Mattie saw what she had done. The still blazing match had fallen
on the chiffon frill of Jean’s wedding dress. A draught was blowing
across it from the open window and, before horrified Mattie could open
her lips to utter a piercing shriek, the frail, dainty thing was a mass
of twisting flames.

Mrs. Milman reached the spare-room first, to see Mattie striving to
smother the fire with a towel.

She snatched the down comforter from the foot of the bed and in a
twinkling the fire was out and the danger over, just as Jean came
running in. She saw Mattie crying and nursing her blistered hands, she
saw her mother standing pale and trembling in the middle of the room,
and she saw on the bed a heap of charred rags that had once been her
wedding dress.

“Mother!” she cried.

“Jean, this is dreadful,” said Mrs. Milman helplessly. “This is what
that child’s vanity and carelessness have come to. To be sure, I suppose
we ought to be thankful it wasn’t the house instead of only a dress.”

But just then Jean did not feel that she could be thankful for anything.
She broke into tears and fled to her room without even touching the
pitiful fragments of the gown she had made with such pride and delight.
She would have to be married in black silk, and it wouldn’t seem like a
marriage at all!

Jean cried all night and moped all the next day. The Milman household
was a rather gloomy one at that time. Mattie, between burned hands and
remorse, was almost heart-broken; and poor Mrs. Milman was, as she
expressed it to Miss Juliana, “quite upset and worried to death.” She
had run over after tea to pour out the dismal story to Miss Juliana.

Miss Juliana listened intently and for once was not forward with
comment. When Mrs. Milman had gone on to the Reeds’, Miss Juliana threw
a shawl over her head and hurried across the sere meadow to the Milman
homestead. She found Jean curled up on the sofa, with her face in a
pillow. Miss Juliana sat down beside her and put her arm over the girl’s
shoulders.

“I’ve heard about it, Jean,” she whispered, “and I’m so sorry. But don’t
cry any more. Please come over to my house for a minute. I have
something to show you.”