There are so many delightful things about being a bride besides actual
happiness, little peaks of pleasure that gradually sink into the level
of existence, unimportant, all-important things that never come again.
To begin with, there is your wedding ring which keeps glistening up at
you, unexpectedly making such an absurd difference, not only to the look
of your hand but to everything else, as well. And there are your trunks,
shiny and untravelled, with glaring new initials almost shouting at you,
so very unlike other people's battered luggage with half obliterated
labels sprawling over it.

And trousseau clothes are quite unlike other clothes--not prettier,
often uglier--but different. Your shoes and stockings match, not yet
having begun that uneven race which, starting from the same mole, ends
with a fawn-colored shoe and a grey blue stocking. Your hats go with
your dresses and your sunshades with both. You have an appropriate
garment for all occasions, instead of always being--as you once were
and soon will become again--short of something. Altogether, there is no
other word for it--you are equipped.

And then you feel exhilarated and responsible--your jewels are still new
and so is the strange, beautifully embroidered monogram on your
handkerchiefs and underclothes. Also, for the first time in your life,
you have a jet evening dress with a train and your maid calls you
"Madam."

Lucy was extremely pleased about all of these things. She was pleased,
too, to have married a foreigner, to be sailing away into a new milieu,
where she would be surrounded by the strange exciting faces of her