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Updated: August 7, 2024
Lilac herself thought the moon daisies would be prettier, with their bright yellow middles; but Miss Ellen's word was law, and as she had set her heart on white lilac, some way of going to Cuddingham must be found since it was too far to walk. There were only two days now to the great event, and during them Lilac did her best to make her wants known everywhere. In vain, however.
"Where did you get it?" asked Mrs Leigh, leaning forward to smell the pure-white blossoms; "I thought there was only the blue in the village." "Why, no more there is," said Mrs White with a half-ashamed smile; "but Jem, he knows I'm a bit silly over them, and he got 'em at Cuddingham t'other day. You see, the day I said I'd marry him he gave me a bunch of white laylocks and that's ten years ago.
It was twelve years since James White's death, twelve years since he had brought the bunch of lilac from Cuddingham which had given his little daughter her name that name which had once sounded so strangely in Mrs White's ears.
Lilac was doubtful, for Cuddingham was a long way off, but she promised to do her best, and Miss Ellen's last words to her were: "Bring moon daisies if you can't get it, but remember I should like white lilac much the best."
"I think she'll do very nicely," said Miss Alice, "when she gets the flowers on. They make all the difference. What will she wear?" Miss Ellen's opinion was decided on that point. "It ought to be white lilac, and plenty of it," she said, "nothing would suit the Queen so well." Then came a difficulty: there was none nearer than Cuddingham. Could it be got in time?
Here were shelter and rest at last, and no one to scold! She crept in, and was just closing the heavy door when towards her, across the rickyard, came the figure of a man. His head was bent so that she could not see his face, but she thought from his lumbering walk that it must be Peter, and in a moment it flashed across her mind that he had just got back from Cuddingham.
"When?" said Lilac eagerly as Peter paused. "It was last Saint Barnaby's, and I'd been up to Cuddingham with None-so-pretty. It was late when I got back, and I remembered I hadn't locked the stable door, and I went across the yard to do it " "Well?" said Lilac with breathless interest. "So as I went, it was most as light as day, and I saw as plain as could be something flit in at the stable door.
"I could get the same price for None-so-pretty," said Peter after a long pause. "Mrs Grey wants her over at Cuddingham. Took a fancy to her a month ago." "I'll not have her sold," said the farmer quickly. "What's the good of selling her? She's useful to us, and the colt isn't." "She ain't not exactly so useful to us as the other cows," said Peter. "She's more of a fancy."
No one was going to or coming from that place; always the same disappointing answers: "Cuddingham! No, thank goodness; I was there last week. I don't want to see that hill again yet a while." Or, "Well now, if I'd known yesterday I might a suited you." And so on. Lilac began to despair.
Then came the funeral; the bunch of white lilac, still fresh, which he had brought from Cuddingham, was put on Jem's newly-made grave, and his widow, passing silently through the people gathered in the churchyard, toiled patiently back to her lonely home. They watched the solitary figure as it showed black against the steep chalky road in the distance.
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