Chapter II: Part 2

"It _is_ effect, father, and it is art--not money. The paper on the wall cost twenty-five cents a roll, but it is the right paper for the place, and the wrong paper at ten times that sum wouldn't give the room such a background of soft restfulness. Then, you see, the old white woodwork is in very good style, and the green walls bring it out. The old floor was easily dressed to give that beautiful waxed finish. They told me how to do that at the best decorator's in Boston. The rug fits the colourings very well. Anthony's old furniture would give any such room dignity. The portrait lends the finishing touch, I think. You see, when you analyse it all there's nothing in the least wonderful. But it looks like a home--doesn't it? And when the little things are in which grow in a home--the photographs, a bowl of sweet-williams from the garden, the lovely old copper lamp you gave me on my birthday--can't you think how dear it will all be?"

Mr. Marcy glanced down keenly into his daughter's face.

"There are a great many things of your own at home which would naturally come into your married home," he said.

Juliet coloured richly. "Yes," she answered with steady eyes, "but except for the lamp, and the photographs, and a few such very little things, I should not bring them. Anthony is poor, but he is very proud. I couldn't hurt him by furnishing his home with the overflow of mine. Besides--I don't need those things. I don't want them. All I want out of the old home is--your love--your blessing, dear!"

The sharp eyes meeting hers softened suddenly. Juliet drew herself to her knees, and leaning forward across her father's lap, reached both arms up and flung them about his neck. He held her close, her head upon his shoulder, and all at once he found the slender figure in his arms shaken with feeling. Juliet was not crying, but she was drawing long, deep breaths like a child who tries to control itself.

"You need have no doubt of either of those things, my little girl," said her father in her ear. "Both are ready. It is only your happiness I want. I distrust the power of any poor man to give it to you. That is all. Since I have seen this house the question looks less doubtful to me--I admit that gladly. But I still am anxious for the future. Even in this attractive place there must be monotony, drudgery, lack of many things you have always had and felt you must have. You have never learned to do without them. I understand that Robeson will not accept them at my hand, nor at yours. I don't know that I think the less of him for that--but--you will have to learn self-denial. I want you to be very sure that you can do it, and that it will be worth while."

There was a little silence, then Juliet gently drew herself away and rose to her feet. She stood looking down at the imposing figure of the elderly man in the chair, and there was something in her face he had never seen there before.

"There's just one thing about it, sir," she said. "I can't possibly spare Anthony Robeson out of my life. I tried to do it, and I know. I would rather live it out in this little home--with him--than share the most promising future with any other man. But there's this you must remember: A man who was brought up to do nothing but ride fine horses, and shoot, and dance, must have something in him to go to work and advance, and earn enough to buy even such a home as this, in five years. He has a future of his own."

Mr. Marcy looked thoughtful. "Yes, that may be true," he said. "I rather think it is."

"And, father----" she bent to lay a roseleaf cheek against his own--"you began with mother in a poorer home than this, and were so happy! Don't I know that?"

"Yes, yes, dear," he sighed. "That's true, too. But we were both poor--had always been so. It was an advance for us--not a coming down."

"It's no coming down for me." There was spirit and fire in the girl's eyes now. "Just to wear less costly clothes--to walk instead of drive--to live on simpler food--what are those things? Look at these," she pointed to the rows of books in the bookcases which lined two walls of the room. "I'm marrying a man of refinement, of family, of the sort of blood that tells. He's an educated man--he loves the things those books stand for. He's good and strong and fine--and if I'm not safe with him I'll never be safe with anybody. But besides all that--I--I love him with all there is of me. Oh--_are_ you satisfied now?"

Blushing furiously she turned away. Her father got to his feet, stood looking after her a moment with something very tender coming into his eyes, then took a step toward her and gathered her into his arms.

VIII.--ON ACCOUNT OF THE TEA-KETTLE

"This is the nineteenth day of August," observed Anthony Robeson. "We finished furnishing the house for my future bride on the third day of the month. Over two weeks have gone by since then. The place must need dusting."

He glanced casually at the figure in white which sat just above him upon the step of the great porch at the back of the Marcy country house. It was past twilight, the moon was not yet up, and only the glow from a distant shaded lamp at the other end of the porch served to give him a hint as to the expression upon his companion's face.

"I'm beginning to lie awake nights," he continued, "trying to remember just how my little home looks. I can't recall whether we set the tea-kettle on the stove or left it in the tin-closet. Can you think?"

"You put it on the stove yourself," said Juliet. "You would have filled it if Auntie Dingley hadn't told you it would rust."

Anthony swerved about upon the heavy oriental rug, which covered the steps, until his back rested against the column; he clasped his arms about one knee, and inclined his head at the precise angle which would enable him to study continuously the shadowy outlines of the face above him, shot across with a ruby ray from the lamp. "I wish I could recollect," he pursued, "whether I left the porch awning up or down. It has rained three times in the two weeks. It ought not to be down."

"I'm sure it isn't," Juliet assured him. There was a hint of laughter in her voice.

"It was rather absurd to put up that awning at all, I suppose. But when you can't afford a roof to your piazza, and compromise on an awning instead, you naturally want to see how it is going to look, and you rush it up. Besides, I think there was a strong impression on my mind that only a few days intervened before our occupancy of the place. It shows how misled one can be."

There was no reply to this observation, made in a depressed tone. After a minute Anthony went on.

"These cares of the householder--they absorb me. I'm always wondering if the lawn needs mowing, and if the new roof leaks. I get anxious about the blinds--do any of them work loose and swing around and bang their lives out in the night? Have the neighbours' chickens rooted up that row of hollyhock seeds? Then those books I placed on the shelves so hurriedly. Are any of them by chance upside down? Is Volume I. elbowed by Volume II. or by Volume VIII.? And I can't get away to see. Coming up here every Saturday night and tearing back every Sunday midnight takes all my time."

"You might spend next Sunday in the new house."

"Alone?"

"Of course. You have so many cares they would keep you from getting lonely."

Anthony made no immediate answer to this suggestion, beyond laughing up at his companion in the dim light for an instant, then growing immediately sober again. But presently he began upon a new aspect of the subject.

"Juliet, are we to be married in church?"

"Tony!--I don't know."

"But what do you think?"

"I--don't think."

"What! Do you mean that?"

"No-o."

"Of course you don't. Well--what about it?"

"I don't know."

"Are we to have a big wedding?"

"Do you want one?"

"I--but that's not the question. Do you want a big wedding?"

She hesitated an instant. Then she answered softly, but with decision: "No."

Anthony drew a long breath. "Thank the Lord!" he said devoutly.

"Why?" she asked in some surprise.

"I've never exactly understood why the boys I've been best man for were so miserable over the prospect of a show wedding--but I know now. A runaway marriage appeals to me now as it never did before. I want to be married--tremendously--but I want to get it over."

A soft laugh answered him. "We'll get it over."

Anthony sat up suddenly. "Will we?" he asked with eagerness. "When?"

"I didn't say 'when'!"

"Juliet--when are you going to say it?"

"Why, Tony--dear----"

"That's right--put in the 'dear,'" he murmured. "I've heard mighty few of 'em yet, and they sound great to me----"

"We've been engaged only two weeks--"

"And two days----"

"And the little house isn't spoiling, even though you're not sure about the tea-kettle and the awning. I--you don't want to hurry things----"

"Don't I!"--rebelliously.

"If I'm very good and say 'Christmas'----"

"'Christmas!'--Great Caesar!"

"But, Tony----"

"Now see here--" he leaned forward and stared up at her, without touching her--he was as yet allowed few of the lover's favours and prized them the more for that--"do you think our case is just like other people's? Here I've been waiting for you all my days--waiting and waiting, and tortured all the time by suspense. Then I lived that month of July with my heart in my mouth--you'll never know what you put me through those days, talking and jollying about 'Eleanor Langham,' and never for one instant, until just that last day, giving me the smallest pinch of hope that it was anything to you except just what it pretended to be. Then--I've been a long time without a home--and the little house--sweetheart--it looks like Heaven to me. Must I stay outside till Christmas--when everything's all ready? Confound it--I don't want to play the pathetic string, and the Lord knows I'm happy as a fellow can be who's got the desire of his life. But----"

A warm hand came gently upon his hair, and for joy at the touch he fell silent. Once he turned his head and put his lips against the white sleeve as it fell near, and looked up an instant with eyes whose expression the person above him felt rather than saw through the subdued light. By and by she took up the conversation.

"So you are rejoiced that I don't want a great wedding?"

"Immensely relieved."

"What would you like best?"

"I don't dare tell you."

"You may."

"Tell me what you would like, Julie."

"Of course father would say the town house, even if it were a small affair. Auntie Dingley would probably agree to having it here--if that were what you--we--wanted--that is----"

Anthony looked up quickly. "Even at Christmas?"

"Why--yes. We could come back. People do that sometimes."

"Yes. Must we do what other people do?"

"Would you rather not?"

"Ten thousand times. It seems to me that the biggest mistake people make is the way they do this thing. Juliet--think of the little house. We made it--you made it. For years, without doubt, it's to hold us and our experiences. Do you know I'd like to give it this one to begin with?--I'm holding my breath!"

Plainly she was holding hers. Her head was turned away--he could just see her profile outlined against the ruby light. And at the moment there were footsteps inside a long French window near at hand which lay open into the library. Mr. Horatio Marcy came out and stood still just behind them.

Anthony sprang to his feet, and came forward up the steps. The older man greeted him cordially. Anthony pulled a big chair into position, and Mr. Marcy sat down. He was smoking and wore an air of relaxation. He and his guest fell to talking, the younger man entering into the conversation with as much ease and spirit as if he were not fresh from what was to him at this hour a much more interesting discussion. Juliet sat quietly and listened.

It grew into an absorbing argument after a little, the two men taking opposite sides of a great governmental question just then claiming public interest. Mrs. Dingley came out and joined the group, and she and Juliet listened with increasing delight in a contest of brains such as was now offered them. Mr. Marcy himself, while he put forth his arguments with conviction and with skill, was evidently enjoying the keen wit and wisdom of his young opponent. The elder man met objection with objection, set up men of straw to be knocked down, and ended at last with a hearty laugh and a frankly appreciative:

"Well, Anthony--you have convinced me of one thing, certainly. There are more sides to the question than I had understood. I will admit that you've made a strong argument. But when I come back I'll down you with fresh material. I shall have plenty of it."

"Are you going away soon, sir?" Anthony asked with some surprise. Mr. Marcy was a frequent traveller, preferring to look after various business interests in faraway ports himself rather than entrust them to others.

"Yes--I shall be off in a few weeks--and for a longer time than usual. I haven't told these ladies of my household yet--but this is as good a time as any. Juliet, little girl--I may be gone all winter this time."

She came quickly to him without speaking, and gave him her regretful answer silently.

"When do you go, Horatio?" Mrs. Dingley asked.

"About the first of October. I hadn't fully decided till to-day. I had thought of inviting you two to go with me."

He looked with a smile at his sister and his daughter, then somewhat quizzically at Anthony. The latter was regarding him with an alert face in which, as nearly as could be made out in the dim light, were no signs of discomfiture.

"Horatio," said Mrs. Dingley, "I wish you would come into the library for a few minutes. This reminds me of a letter I had to-day from one of your old friends, asking when you were to be at home."

The French window closed on the two older people. Juliet, left sitting on the arm of her father's chair, found Anthony behind her.

"Do you want to go on a voyage to the Philippines?" he was asking over her shoulder.

"I'm not sure just what I do want," she answered rather breathlessly.

"The tea-kettle would rust while you were gone."

He got no reply.

"The dust would grow inches deep on the dining-table we polished so carefully."

Juliet rose and walked slowly to the edge of the steps. Anthony followed. "Let's go and walk on the terrace," he proposed, and they ran down to the smooth sward below. It was a warm night, with no dew, and the short-shaven grass was dry. All the stars were out. Anthony walked beside the figure in white, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Do white ruffled curtains like those at our windows ever grow musty from being shut up?" he insinuated gently.

"I don't know."

"Will you write from every port you touch at? It will take a good many letters to satisfy me."

"I suppose so."

"Suppose what? That you will write?"

Juliet stood still. "You're the greatest wheedler I ever saw," she said.

"Is that a compliment?"

"It's not meant for one. What am I to do when I'm----"

"Married to me?--I don't know, poor child. I can only pity you. What do you think the prospect is for me, never to be able to get the smallest concession from you except by every art of coaxing? Yet--if I can get this thing I want, by any means--I warn you I shall not give up until I've seen you sail."

"You'll not see me sail."

He wheeled upon her. He had her hand in his grasp. "And if you don't go?"

"I'll stay."

"With me?"

She laughed irresistibly. "How could I stay without you?"

"Will you marry me before your father goes?"

"Oh, Tony, Tony----"

"We can't be married without his blessing, can we?"

"No--dear father."

"Then----"

"I'll tell you to-morrow," said she.

IX.--A BISHOP AND A HAY-WAGON

Juliet Marcy's prospective maid-of-honour found Anthony Robeson's best man at her elbow the moment she entered the waiting-room of the big railway station. Now, although she greeted him with a charming little conscious look, there was nothing either new or singular about the quiet rush he had made across the waiting-room the instant he saw her. The rest of the party of twenty people who were going down into the country to the Marcy-Robeson wedding understood it perfectly, although the engagement had not been announced and probably would not be until Wayne Carey should have an income decidedly larger than he had at present.

Judith Dearborn joined the group at once, and Carey reluctantly followed her. Judith had a way of joining groups and of giving her betrothed many impatient half-hours thereby.

"Just think of this," she said to the others. "When I knew Juliet had really given in to Anthony Robeson at last I thought I should be asked to assist at an impressive church wedding. But here we are going down to what Tony describes as 'a box of a house' in the most rural of suburbs. If it's really as small as he says even twenty people will be a tight fit."

"How in the world did they come to be married there?" asked the sister of the best man. Everybody had been summoned to this wedding so hurriedly and so informally that nobody knew much about it.

The son of the Bishop--whose father was going down to perform the ceremony--answered promptly:

"Tony tells me its Juliet's own choice. You see they furnished the house together, with her aunt, Mrs. Dingley; and Juliet fell so in love with it that she must needs be married in it. What's occurred to that girl I don't know. After the Robesons of Kentucky lost their money and everything else but their social standing I thought it was all up with Anthony. But he's plucky. He's made a way for himself, and he's won Juliet somehow. He seems to be a late edition of that obstinate chap who remarked 'I will find a way or make one.' By Jove--he must have made one when he convinced Juliet Marcy that she could be happy in a house where twenty people are a tight fit."

When the train stopped at the small station Judith Dearborn said in Wayne Carey's ear, as he glanced wonderingly from the train: "Is this it? Juliet Marcy must be perfectly crazy!"

"She certainly must," admitted Robeson's best man. But he stifled a sigh. If Juliet Marcy could do so crazy a thing as to marry Anthony Robeson on the comparatively small salary that young man--brought up to do nothing at all--was now earning, why must Wayne Carey wait for several times that income before he could have Juliet's closest friend? Was there really such a difference in girls?

But at the next instant he was shouting hilariously, and so was everybody else except the Bishop and the Bishop's wife, who only smiled indulgently. The rest of the party were young people, and their glee brooked no repression. The moment they reached the little platform they comprehended not only that they were coming to a most informal wedding--they were also in for a decidedly novel lark.

Close to the edge of the platform stood a great hay-wagon, cushioned with fragrant hay and garlanded with goldenrod and purple asters. Standing erect on the front, one hand grasping the reins which reached out over a four-in-hand of big, well-groomed, flower-bedecked farm horses, the other waving a triumphant greeting to his friends, was Anthony Robeson, in white from head to foot, his face alight with happiness and fun. He looked like a young king; there could be no other comparison for his splendid outlines as he towered there. And better yet, he looked as he had ever looked, through prosperity and through poverty, like a "Robeson of Kentucky."

Below him, prettier than she had ever been--and that was saying much--her eyes brilliant with the spirit of the day, laughing, dressed also in white, a big white hat drooping over her brown curls, stood Juliet Marcy.

In a storm of salutations and congratulations the guests rushed toward this extraordinary equipage and the radiant pair who were its charioteers. All regrets over the probable commonplaceness of a small country wedding had vanished.

"Might have known they would do things up in shape somehow," grunted the Bishop's son approvingly. "This is the stuff. Conventionality be tabooed. They're going to the other extreme, and that's the way to do. If you don't want an altar and candles, and a high-mucky-muck at the organ, have a hay-wagon. _Gee!_--Let me get up here next to Ben Hur and the lady!"

Even the Bishop, sitting with clerical coat-tails carefully parted, his handsome face beaming benevolently from under his round hat, and Mrs. Bishop, granted by special dispensation a cushion upon the hay seat, enjoyed that drive. Anthony, plying a long, beribboned lash, aroused his heavy-footed steeds into an exhilarating trot, and the hay-wagon, carrying safely its crew of young society people in their gayest mood, swept over the half-mile from the station to the house like a royal barge.

As they drew up a chorus of "Oh's!" not merely polite but sincerely surprised and admiring, recognised the quaint beauty of the little house. It was no commonplace country home now, though the changes wrought had been comparatively slight. It looked as if it might have stood for years in just this fashion, yet it was as far removed from its primitive characterless condition as may be an artist's drawing of a face upon which he has altered but a line.

Mrs. Dingley and Mr. Horatio Marcy--a pair whose presence anywhere would have been a voucher for the decorum of the most unconventional proceedings--welcomed the party upon the wide, uncovered porch.

"We're going to be married very soon, to have it over," called Anthony. "But you may explore the house first, so your minds shall be at rest during the crisis. Just don't wander too far away in examining this ancestral mansion. There are six rooms. I should advise your going in line, otherwise complications may occur in the upper hall. Please don't all try to get into the kitchen at once; it can't be done. It will hold Juliet and me at the same time--all the rooms have been stretched to do that--they had to be; but I'm not sure as to their capacity for more. Now make yourselves absolutely at home. The place is yours--for a few hours. After that it's mine--and Juliet's."

He glanced, laughing, at his bride, as he spoke from where he stood in the doorway. She was on the little landing of the staircase, at the opposite end of the living-room. She looked down and across at him, and nearly everybody in the room--they were thronging through at the moment--caught that glance. She was smiling back at him, and her eyes lingered only an instant after they met his, but her friends all saw. There could be no question that the Juliet Marcy who, since she had laid aside her pinafores, had kept many men at bay, had at last surrendered. As for Anthony----

"Why, he's always been in love with her," said the Bishop's son in the ear of the best man, as in accordance with their host's permission they peeped admiringly in at the little kitchen, "but any idiot can see that he's fairly off his feet now. Ideal condition--eh? Say, this dining-room's great--Jove, it is. I'm going to get asked out here to dinner as soon as they are back. Let's go upstairs. The girls are just coming down--hear 'em gurgling over what they saw?"

Upstairs the best man looked in at the blue-and-white room with eyes which one with penetration might have said were envious. Indeed, he stared at everything with much the same expression. He was the soberest man present. Ordinarily he could be counted on to enliven such occasions, but to-day his fits of hilarity were only momentary, and during the intervals he was observed by the Bishop's son to be gazing somewhat yearningly into space with an abstraction new to him.

Nobody knew just how the moment for the ceremony arrived. But when the survey of the house was over and everybody had instinctively come back to the living-room, the affair was brought about most naturally. The Bishop, at a word from the best man, took his place in the doorway opening upon the porch, which had been set in a great nodding border of goldenrod. Anthony, making his way among his guests, came with a quiet face up to Juliet and, bending, said softly, "Now, dear?" A hush followed instantly, and the guests fell back to places at the sides of the room. Anthony's best man was at his elbow, and the two went over to the Bishop, to stand by his side. Mr. Marcy moved quietly into his place. Juliet, with Judith, who had kept beside her, walked across the floor, and Anthony, meeting her, led her a step farther to face the Bishop. It was but a suggestion of the usual convention, and Anthony, in his white clothes, surrounded as he was by men in frock-coats, was assuredly the most unconventional bridegroom that had ever been seen. Juliet, too, wore the simplest of white gowns, with no other adornment than that of her own beauty. Yet, somehow, as the guests, grown sober in an instant, looked on and noted these things, there was not one who felt that either grace or dignity was lacking. The rich voice of the Bishop was as impressive as it had ever been in chancel or at altar; the look on Anthony's face was one which fitted the tone in which he spoke his vows; and Juliet, giving herself to the man whose altered fortunes she was agreeing to share, bore a loveliness which made her a bride one would remember long--and envy.

"There, that's done," said the Bishop's son with a gusty sigh of relief, which brought the laugh so necessary to the relaxing of the tension which accompanies such scenes. "Jove, it's a good thing to see a fellow like Robeson safely tied up at last. You never can tell where these quixotic ideas about houses and hay-wagons and weddings may lead. It's a terrible strain, though, to see people married. I always tremble like a leaf--I weigh only a hundred and ninety-eight now, and these things affect me. It's so frightful to think what might happen if they should trip up on their specifications."

There was a simple wedding breakfast served--by whom nobody could tell. It was eaten out in the orchard--a pleasant place, for the neglected grass had been close cut, and an old-fashioned garden at one side perfumed the air with late September flowers. The trim little country maids who brought the plates came from a willow-bordered path which led presumably to the next house, some distance down the road. There were several innovations in the various dishes, delicious to taste. Altogether it was a little feast which everybody enjoyed with unusual zest. And the life of the party was the bridegroom.

"I never saw a fellow able to scintillate like that at his own wedding," remarked the son of the Bishop to the best man's sister. "Usually they are so completely dashed by their own temerity in getting into such an irretrievable situation that they sit with their ears drooping and their eyes bleared. Do you suppose it's getting married in tennis clothes that's done it?"

"Tennis clothes!" cried the best man's sister with a merry laugh. "If you realised how much handsomer he looks than you men in your frock-coats you would not make fun."

"Make fun!" repeated the Bishop's son solemnly. "I joke only to keep my head above water. I never in my life was so completely submerged in the desire to get married instantly and live in a picturesque band-box. Nothing can keep me from it longer than it takes to find the girl and the band-box. If--if--" his voice dropped to a whisper, and a hint of redness crept into his face which belied his jesting words, "you knew of the girl--I--er--say--should you mind living in a band-box?"

The best man's sister was the sort of girl who can discern when even an inveterate joker is daring to be somewhat more than half in earnest, and she flushed so prettily that the son of the Bishop caught her hand boyishly under the little table. He had hitherto been considered a hopeless old bachelor, so it may readily be seen that, now the contagion had caught him, his was quite a serious case.

X.--ON A THRESHOLD

When it was all over Judith Dearborn went upstairs with Juliet to help her dress for her going away. The maid-of-honour looked about the blue-and-white room with thoughtful eyes.

"This is certainly the dearest room I ever saw," she said. "Oh, Juliet, do you think you really will be happy here?"

"What do you think about it, dear?" asked Juliet.

"Oh--I--well, really--I never imagined that a little old house like this could be made so awfully attractive. But, Juliet--you--you must be very, very fond of Anthony to give up so many things. How well he looked to-day. Seems to me he's grown gloriously in every way since he--since his family came into so many misfortunes."

Juliet smiled, but answered nothing.

"And you're so different, too. Never in my life would I have imagined you having a wedding like this--and yet it's been absolutely the prettiest one I ever saw. That's a sweet gown to go away in--but it's the simplest thing you ever wore, I'm sure. Juliet, where are you going?"

"We are going to drive through the Berkshires in a cart."

"Juliet Marcy!"

"'Robeson,'" corrected Juliet with a little laugh, but in a tone which it was a pity Anthony could not hear. "Don't forget that. I'm so proud of the name. And I think a drive through the Berkshires will be a perfectly ideal trip."

Judith Dearborn was not assisting the bride at all. Instead she was sitting in a chair, staring at Juliet with much the same abstraction of manner observable in the best man throughout the day.

"Of course you didn't need to live this way," observed Miss Dearborn at length. "You could have afforded to live much more expensively."

"No, I couldn't," said Juliet with a flash in her eyes, though she smiled; "I couldn't have afforded to do one thing that would hurt Tony's pride. Why, Judith--he's a 'Robeson of Kentucky.'"

"Well, he looks it," admitted Judith. "And you're a Marcy of Massachusetts. The two go well together. Juliet, do you know--somehow--I thought it was a fearful sacrifice you were making, even for such a man as Anthony--but--this blue-and-white room----"

"Ah, this blue-and-white room----" repeated Juliet. Then she came over and dropped on her knees by her friend in her impulsive way and put both arms around her. The plain little going-away gown touched folds with the one whose elegance was equalled only by its cost. Anthony Robeson's wife looked straight up into the eyes of her maid-of-honour and whispered:

"Judith, don't put Wayne--and--your blue-and-white room off too long. You will not be any happier to wait--if you love him."

* * * * *

Drawn up close to the door stood the cart. Beside it waited Anthony. Around the cart crowded twenty people. When Juliet came through them to say good-bye the son of the Bishop murmured:

"Er--Mrs. Robeson----"

"Yes, Mr. Farnham----" said Juliet promptly, her delicate flush answering the name, as it had answered it many times that day.

"When are you going to be at home to your friends?"

"The fifteenth day of October," said Juliet. "And from then on, every day in the week, every week in the year. Come and see us--everybody. But don't expect any formal invitations."

"I'll be down," declared the Bishop's son. "I'll be down once a week."

"Please don't stay long after we are gone," requested Anthony, putting his bride into the cart and springing in beside her. He gathered up the reins. "Good-bye," he called. "Take this next train home. It goes in an hour. Lock the door, Carey, and hang the key up in plain sight by the window there. We live in the country now, and that's the way we do. Good-bye--good-bye!"

Then he drove rapidly away down the road.

"And that pair," said the son of the Bishop gravely, looking after them and speaking to the company in general, "married, so to speak, in a hay-wagon, and going for a wedding trip in a wheel-barrow through the Berkshires, is Juliet Marcy and Anthony Robeson."

"No, my son," said the Bishop slowly--and everybody always listened when the Bishop spoke: "It is Anthony and Juliet Robeson--and that makes all the difference. I think two happier young people I never married. And may God be with them."

The best man said that he and the maid-of-honour would walk the half-mile to the station. The son of the Bishop and the sister of the best man had already taken this course without saying anything about it. Nearly everybody murmured something about it being a lovely evening and a glorious sunset and a charming road, and, pairing off advisedly, adopted the same plan. The Bishop and Mrs. Bishop, Mrs. Dingley and Mr. Marcy decided on being driven over to the station in a light surrey provided for this anticipated emergency.

The best man and the maid-of-honour succeeded in dropping behind the rest of the pedestrians. Their friends were used to that, and let them mercifully alone.

"Mighty pretty affair," observed Carey in a melancholy tone.

"Yes--in its way," admitted Judith Dearborn with apparent reluctance.

"Cosy house."

"Very."

"Tony seemed happy."

"Ecstatic." Judith's inflection was peculiar.

"Nobody would have suspected Juliet of feeling blue about living off here."

"She doesn't seem to."

"What's made the difference?"

"Anthony Robeson, probably."

"Must seem pretty good to him to have her care like that."

"I presume so."

"It isn't everybody that could inspire such an--affection--in such a girl."

"No, indeed."

Carey looked intensely gloomy. The two walked on in silence, Miss Dearborn studying the sunset, Carey studying Miss Dearborn. Suddenly he spoke again.

"Judith, do all our plans for the future seem as desirable to you as they did this morning?"

"Which ones?"

"Apartment in the locality we've picked out--life in the style the locality calls for--and _wait_ for it all until I'm _gray_----" with a burst of tremendous energy. "Good heavens, darling, what's the use? Why--if I could have you and a little home like that----"

He bit his lip hard. The maid-of-honour walked on, her head turned still farther away than before. They were nearing the station. Just ahead lay a turn in the road--the last turn. The rest of the party, with a shout back at this dilatory pair, disappeared around it. From the distance came the long, shrill whistle of the approaching train.

The maid-of-honour glanced behind: there was not a soul in sight; ahead: and saw nothing to alarm a girl with an impulse in her heart. At a point where great masses of reddening sumac hid a little dip in the road from everything earthly she stopped suddenly, and turning, put out both hands. She looked up into a face which warmed on the instant into a half-incredulous joy and said very gently: "You may."

* * * * *

The sun had been gone only two hours, and the soft early autumn darkness had but lately settled down upon the silent little house, waiting alone for its owners to come back some October day, when a cart, driven slowly, rolled along the road. In front of the house it stopped.

"Where are we?" asked Juliet's voice. "This is a private house. I thought we--Why, Tony--do you see?--We've come around in a circle instead of going on to that little inn you spoke of. This is--_home_!"

"Is it?" said Anthony's voice in a tone of great surprise. "So it is!" He leaped out and came around to Juliet's side. "What a fluke!" But the happy laugh in his voice betrayed him.

"Anthony Robeson," cried Juliet softly, "you need not pretend to be surprised. You meant to do it."

"Did I?" He reached out both arms to take her down. "Perhaps I did. Do you mind--Mrs. Robeson? Shall we go on?"

Juliet looked down at him. "No, I don't think I mind," she said.

He swung her down, and they went slowly up the walk. "Somehow," said Anthony Robeson, looking up at the house, lying as if asleep in the September night, "when I thought of taking you to that little public inn, and then remembered that we might have this instead--We can go on with our wedding journey to-morrow, dear-but--to-night----"

He led her silently upon the porch. He found the key, where in jest he had bade his best man put it, and unlocked the door and threw it open.

He stepped first upon the threshold, and, turning, held out his arms.

"Come," he said, smiling in the darkness.

XI.--A BACHELOR AT DINNER

"Hallo there--Anthony Robeson--don't be in such a hurry you can't notice a fellow."

The big figure rushing through the snow paused, wheeled, and thrust out a hand of hearty greeting. "That you, Carey? Hat over your eyes like a train robber--electric lights all behind you--and you expect me to smile at you as I go by! How are you? How's Judith?"

"Infernally lonely--I mean I am--Judith's off on a visit to her mother. Say, Tony--take me home with you--will you? I want some decent things to eat, so I'm holding you up on purpose."

"Good--come on. Train goes in a few minutes. Juliet will be delighted."

The two hurried on together into the station from which the suburban trains were constantly leaving. As they entered they encountered a mutual friend, at whom both flung themselves enthusiastically with alternate greetings:

"Roger Barnes----"

"Roger--old fellow--glad to see you back!"

"Patient safely landed?"

"Get a big fee?"

"Where you going?"

"Let's take him home with us, Tony----" The third man looked smiling at Tony. "I'll challenge you to," said he.

"That's easy--come on," responded Anthony Robeson with cordiality. "I'll just telephone Mrs. Robeson."

"That's it," said Dr. Roger Barnes. "You don't dare not to. I understand. Go ahead. But if she's too much dashed let me know, will you?"

Anthony turned, laughing, into a telephone closet, from which he emerged in time to catch his train with his guests.

"It's all right," he assured them. "But it's only fair to let her know a few minutes ahead. You like to understand, Roger, before you start, don't you, whether your emergency case is a hip-fracture or a cut lip, so you can tell whether to take your glue or your sewing-silk?"

"By all means," said the bachelor of the party. "And I suppose you think Mrs. Juliet Marcy Robeson is now smiling happily to herself over this little surprise. I'll lay you anything you please that if I can make her own up she'll admit that she said '_Merciful heavens!_' into the telephone when she got your message."

Anthony shook his head. "Evidently you don't know what guests in the remote suburbs on a stormy February night mean to a poor girl whose nearest neighbour is five hundred feet away. Your ideas of married life need a little freshening, too. They're pretty antique."

It was a half-mile from the station to the house--the "box of a house"--which had been Anthony's home for five months, and toward which he now led his friends with the air of a man about to show his most treasured possessions. He strode through the deepening snow as if he enjoyed the strenuous tramp, setting a pace which Wayne Carey, with his office life, if not the doctor, more vigorously built and bred, found difficult to maintain.

"Here we are," called the leader, pointing toward windows glowing with a ruddy light. The doctor looked up with interest. Carey was a frequent visitor, but the busy surgeon, old school-and-college chum of Anthony's though he was, was about to have his first introduction to a place of which he had heard much, but of whose nearness to Paradise he doubted with the strong skepticism of a man who has seen many a fair beginning end in all unhappiness and desolation.

As they stamped upon the little porch the door flew open, the brilliancy and comfort of a fire-and-lamplit room leaped out at them, a delicious faint odour of cookery assailed their hungry nostrils, and the welcome which makes all worth having met them on the threshold.

"Wayne," said the rich young voice of the mistress of the house, "I'm so glad. Roger Barnes, this is just downright good of you; it's so long you've promised us this. Tony----"

What she said to Tony must have been whispered in his ear if voiced at all, for the two guests, looking on with laughing, envious eyes, saw their hostess swept unceremoniously into a bearlike embrace, swung into the air as one thrusts up a child, poised there an instant, laughing and protesting, then slowly lowered to be kissed, and set down once more lightly upon the floor.

"It's all right. I didn't tumble your hair a bit," said Anthony coolly. "Excuse me, gentlemen, but Wayne understands--and Roger will some day, I hope--that a man who has been thinking about it all the way home can't put it off on account of a couple of idiots who stand and stare instead of politely turning their backs. Oh, don't mention it--it doesn't disturb me at all; and Mrs. Robeson is becoming reconciled to my impetuosity by degrees. Make yourselves at home, boys. Juliet----"

"Take them upstairs, Tony, please. Of course we can't let them go back to-night, now we have them. It's beginning to storm heavily, isn't it? I thought so. Take them to the guest-room, Tony--and dinner will be served as soon as you are down."

* * * * *

"By Jupiter, I believe she means it," declared the doctor, with approval, as the door of the bedroom closed on his host. "I think I can tell when a woman is shamming. She's improved, hasn't she, tremendously? Pretty girl always, but--well--bloomed now. Nice little house. Believe I'll have to stay, though I ought not--just to take observations on Tony. His enthusiasm has all the appearance of reality. In fact, it strikes me he has rather----"

It was on his lips to say "rather more than you have," but it occurred to him in time that jokes on this ground are dangerous. Wayne Carey had been married in November, was living in a somewhat unpretentious way in a downtown boarding-house, and certainly had to-night so much of a lost-dog air that it made the doctor pause. So he substituted: "--rather more than I should have expected, even of a fellow who has got the girl he has wanted all his life," and fell to washing and brushing vigorously, eyeing meanwhile the little room with a critical bachelor's appreciation of beauty and comfort in the quarters he is to occupy. It was very simply furnished, certainly, but it struck him as a place where his dreams were likely to be pleasant for every reason in the world.

Downstairs, Juliet, in the dining-room, was surveying her table with the hostess's satisfaction. Opposite her stood a tall and slender girl, black-haired, black-eyed, with a face of great attractiveness.

"I wish, Mrs. Robeson," she was saying eagerly, "you would let me serve you as your maid, and not make a guest of me. Really, I should love to do it. I don't need to meet your friends, and I don't mind seeming what I really am--your----"

"Rachel Redding," Juliet interrupted, lifting an affectionate glance across the table, "if you want to seem what you really are--my friend--you will let me do as I like."

"My shabby clothes----" murmured the girl.

"If I could look as much like a princess as you do in them----"

"Mrs. Robeson, in that lovely dull red you're a queen----"

"--dowager," finished Juliet gayly. "Well, I'll be proud of you, and you can be proud of me, if you like, and together we'll make those hungry men think there's nothing like us. The dinner's the thing. Isn't it the luckiest chance in the world I sent for those oysters this morning? Doctor Barnes is perfectly fine, but he never would believe in the happiness of married life if the coffee were poor or the beefsteak too much broiled. Doesn't the table look pretty? Those red geranium blossoms you brought me give it just the gay touch it needed this winter night."

* * * * *

Three men, standing about the wide fireplace, warming cold hands at its friendly blaze, turned expectantly as their youthful hostess came in, followed by a graceful girl in gray. Juliet presented her guests with the air of conferring upon them a favour, and they seemed quite ready to accept it as such.

Anthony looked on with interest to see a person whom he had known hitherto only as a pretty but poor young neighbour whom Juliet had engaged to help her for a certain part of every day, introduced as his wife's friend, and greeted by Doctor Barnes and Wayne Carey with quite evident admiration and pleasure. He looked hard at her, as Carey seated her, noticing for the first time that she was really worth consideration, and remembering vaguely that Juliet had more than once tried to impress him with the fact. If it had not been for the other fellows, with whose eyes as their host he was now stimulated to observe her, he might have been still some time longer in coming to the realisation that Juliet had found somebody in whom her genuine interest was not misplaced. But Anthony Robeson had all his life been singularly blind to the fascinations of most other women than Juliet. As he turned his keen gaze from Rachel Redding to the charming figure that sat on the other side of the table the satisfaction in his eyes became so pronounced that it could mean, Dr. Roger Barnes admitted to himself, as he caught it, nothing less than a very real happiness.

It was not an elaborate dinner. It was not by any means the sort of dinner Juliet might have prepared had she known that morning whom she was to entertain. It was merely a dinner planned with affectionate care to please and satisfy one hungry man who liked good things to eat--and amplified as much as possible in quantity after Anthony's message reached her. And by that admirable collusion between hostess and feminine friend which can sometimes be effected when the situation demands it, the dinner prepared for three seemed ample for five.

Between them Juliet and Rachel Redding served the various dishes and changed the plates which Anthony handed from his place. It was gracefully done and so simply that the absence of a maid was a thing to be enjoyed rather than regretted. When Juliet, in the softly sweeping dull-red frock which made of her a warm picture for a winter's night, slipped from her chair and moved about the room, or brought in from the kitchen a steaming dish, she seemed the ideal hostess, herself bestowing what her own hands had prepared. And when Rachel Redding offered a man a cup of fragrant coffee, smiling down in the general direction of his uplifted face without meeting his eyes, there was certainly nothing lost from his enjoyment of the beverage.

"Say, but this dinner has tasted just about right," was Wayne Carey's satisfied observation as he leaned back in his chair at last, after draining his third cup of coffee--and the pot itself, if he had but known it.

"Went to the spot?" asked Anthony, leaning back also with the expression of the friendly host. He was young to cultivate that expression, but he appeared to find no difficulty about it.

"It did--every last mouthful."

"Good. Now, if you fellows will come back to the fire and have a pipeful of talk we shall not be missed. In this house on ordinary occasions we reverse the order of after-dinner privileges--the men retire to the atmosphere of the sofa-pillows, and the women--I'm not allowed to tell what they do. But after remaining discreetly out of sight for some little time, during which faint sounds as of the rattle of china penetrate through closed doors, they reappear, pleasantly flushed and full of a sort of relieved joy."

"I know what I wish," said Roger Barnes, looking back from the dining-room doorway at young Mrs. Robeson; "I wish that when the dishes are all ready you would let me know. I should like nothing better than to have a dish-towel at them. I know all about it--my mother taught me how."

He looked so precisely as if he meant it, and the glance he sent past Juliet at Rachel Redding was so suggestive of his dislike to be separated for the coming hour from the feminine portion of the household, that his hostess answered promptly: "Of course you may. We never refuse an offer like that. We will try you--on promise of good behaviour."

XII.--THE BACHELOR BEGS A DISH-TOWEL

When the door closed on the three Juliet produced from somewhere two aprons--attractive affairs on the pinafore order--one of which she slipped upon Rachel, the other donned herself.

"These are my kitchen party-aprons," she said gayly, noting how the pretty garment became the girl, "calculated to impress the masculine mind with the charm of domesticity in women. The doctor needs a little illustrated lesson of the sort. Life in boarding-houses isn't adapted to encourage a man in the belief that real comfort is to be found anywhere outside of a bachelor's club."

Before he was called the doctor forsook a half-smoked cigar and the seductive hollows of Anthony's easiest chair and marched briskly out to the kitchen.

"You see I distrust you," he announced, putting in his head at the door. "I'm afraid you will get them all done without me."

"Not a bit of it. Here you are," and Juliet tied a big white apron about a large-sized waist. "Here's your towel. No, don't touch the glass; a man is too unconscious of his strength."

"A surgeon?" demurred Rachel softly, from over her steaming dishpan.

"Thank you, Miss Redding," said the doctor, smiling.

"Ah, how stupid of me," Juliet made amends swiftly. "Miss Redding remembers that when I got my telephone message to-night I told her that the most distinguished young specialist in the city was coming here to dinner. A hand trained to such delicate tasks as those of surgery--here, Dr. Roger Barnes, forgive me, and wipe my most precious goblets."

"You'll have my nerves unsteady with such speeches as that," said he, but he accepted the trust. He held the goblets and the other daintily cut and engraved pieces of glass with evident pleasure in the task.

Meanwhile Juliet and Rachel made rapid work of the greater part of the dishes, handling thin china with the dexterity of housewives who love their work--and their china. Talk and laughter flowed brightly through it all, and when the doctor had finished his glass he looked disappointed at seeing not much left to do. At the moment Rachel was scrubbing and scraping a big baking-dish, portions of whose surface strongly resisted her efforts, in spite of previous soaking. The assistant, looking about him for new worlds to conquer, fell upon this dish.

"Here, here," said he, "let me have it. I'll use on it some of the unconscious strength Mrs. Robeson credits me with."

But Rachel clung to the dish. "Proper housekeepers," she averred, "always say 'That's all, thank you,' as soon as the china is done, and finish the pots and kettles after the guest has gone back to pleasanter things."

"I see. Did you ever have a man for dish-wiper before?"

"Never a surgeon," admitted Miss Redding.

"Then you don't appreciate the fact that a man likes to do big things which make the most show and get the credit for them."

He took the dish away from her by a dexterous little twist in which conscious strength certainly asserted itself. Rachel, laughing, with a dash of colour in cheeks which were normally of dark ivory tints, accepted the dish-towel he handed her.

* * * * *