and beyond everything about them, as if nothing ever, ever could trouble them—now.”
Cyril lifted his eyebrows.
“Humph! Well, as I said before, it was a very sensible wedding,” he declared.
This time Marie noticed the emphasis. She laughed, though her eyes looked a little troubled.
“I know, dear, of course, what you mean. I thought our wedding was beautiful; but I would have made it simpler if I'd realized in time how you—you—”
“How I abhorred pink teas and purple pageants,” he finished for her, with a frowning smile. “Oh, well, I stood it—for the sake of what it brought me.” His face showed now only the smile; the frown had vanished. For a man known for years to his friends as a “hater of women and all other confusion,” Cyril Henshaw was looking remarkably well-pleased with himself.
His wife of less than a year colored as she met his gaze. Hurriedly she picked up her needle.
The man laughed happily at her confusion.
“What are you doing? Is that my stocking?” he demanded.
A look, half pain, half reproach, crossed her face.
“Why, Cyril, of course not! You—you told me not to, long ago. You said my darns made—bunches.
“Ho! I meant I didn't want to wear them,” retorted the man, upon whom the tragic wretchedness of that half-sobbed “bunches” had been quite lost. “I love to see you mending them,” he finished, with an approving glance at the pretty little picture of domesticity before him.
A peculiar expression came to Marie's eyes.
“Why, Cyril, you mean you like to have me mend them just for—for the sake of seeing me do it, when you know you won't ever wear them?”
“Sure!” nodded the man, imperturbably. Then, with a sudden laugh, he asked: “I wonder now, does Billy love to mend socks?”
Marie smiled, but she sighed, too, and shook her head.
“I'm afraid not, Cyril.”
“Nor cook?”
Marie laughed outright this time. The vaguely troubled look had fled from her eyes
“Oh, Billy's helped me beat eggs and butter sometimes, but I never knew her to cook a thing or want to cook a thing, but once; then she spent nearly two weeks trying to learn to make puddings—for you.”
“For me!”
Marie puckered her lips queerly.
“Well, I supposed they were for you at the time. At all events she was trying to make them for some one of you boys; probably it was really for Bertram, though.”
“Humph!” grunted Cyril. Then, after a minute, he observed: “I judge Kate thinks Billy'll never make them—for anybody. I'm afraid Sister Kate isn't pleased.”
“Oh, but Mrs. Hartwell was—was disappointed in the wedding,” apologized Marie, quickly. “You know she wanted it put off anyway, and she didn't like such a simple one.
“Hm-m; as usual Sister Kate forgot it wasn't her funeral—I mean, her wedding,” retorted Cyril, dryly. “Kate is never happy, you know, unless she's managing things.”
“Yes, I know,” nodded Marie, with a frowning smile of recollection at certain features of her own wedding.
“She doesn't approve of Billy's taste in guests, either,” remarked Cyril, after a moment's silence.
“I thought her guests were lovely,” spoke up Marie, in quick defense. “Of course, most of her social friends are away—in July; but Billy is never a society girl, you know, in spite of the way Society is always trying to lionize her and Bertram.”
“Oh, of course Kate knows that; but she says it seems as if Billy needn't have gone out and gathered in the lame and the halt and the blind.”
“Nonsense!” cried Marie, with unusual sharpness for her. “I suppose she said that just because of Mrs. Greggory's and Tommy Dunn's crutches.”
“Well, they didn't make a real festive-looking wedding party, you must admit,” laughed Cyril; “what with the bridegroom's own arm in a sling, too! But who were they all, anyway?”
“Why, you knew Mrs. Greggory and Alice, of course—and Pete,” smiled Marie. “And wasn't Pete happy? Billy says she'd have had Pete if she had no one else; that there wouldn't have been any wedding, anyway, if it hadn't been for his telephoning Aunt Hannah that night.”
“Yes; Will told me.”
“As for Tommy and the others—most of them were those people that Billy had at her home last summer for a two weeks' vacation—people, you know, too poor to give themselves one, and too proud to accept one from ordinary charity. Billy's been following them up and doing little things for them ever since—sugarplums and frosting on their cake, she calls it; and they adore her, of course. I think it was lovely of her to have them, and they did have such a good time! You should have seen Tommy when you played that wedding march for Billy to enter the room. His poor little face was so transfigured with joy that I almost cried, just to look at him. Billy says he loves music—poor little fellow!”
“Well, I hope they'll be happy, in spite of Kate's doleful prophecies. Certainly they looked happy enough to-day,” declared Cyril, patting a yawn as he rose to his feet. “I fancy Will and Aunt Hannah are lonesome, though, about now,” he added.
“Yes,” smiled Marie, mistily, as she gathered up her work. “I know what Aunt Hannah's doing. She's helping Rosa put the house to rights, and she's stopping to cry over every slipper and handkerchief of Billy's she finds. And she'll do that until that funny clock of hers strikes twelve, then she'll say 'Oh, my grief and conscience—midnight!' But the next minute she'll remember that it's only half-past eleven, after all, and she'll send Rosa to bed and sit patting Billy's slipper in her lap till it really is midnight by all the other clocks.”
Cyril laughed appreciatively.
“Well, I know what Will is doing,” he declared.
“Will is in Bertram's den dozing before the fireplace with Spunkie curled up in his lap.”
As it happened, both these surmises were not far from right. In the Strata, the Henshaws' old Beacon Street home, William was sitting before the fireplace with the cat in his lap, but he was not dozing. He was talking.
“Spunkie,” he was saying, “your master, Bertram, got married to-day—and to Miss Billy. He'll be bringing her home one of these days—your new mistress. And such a mistress! Never did cat or house have a better!
“Just think; for the first time in years this old place is to know the touch of a woman's hand—and that's what it hasn't known for almost twenty years, except for those few short months six years ago when a dark-eyed girl and a little gray kitten (that was Spunk, your predecessor, you know) blew in and blew out again before we scarcely knew they were here.
