"Till the stars are old, And the sun grows cold, And the leaves of the judgment Book unfold."

It brought back the whole moonlighted desert to Lloyd, with the odor of orange-blossoms wafted across it, as it had been on two eventful occasions they rode over it together. She sat quite still in the hammock, with the bit of turquoise clasped tight in her hand. It was hard to listen to such a beautiful voice unmoved. It thrilled her as no song had ever done before.

As it floated into the library, it thrilled Mary also, but in a different way; for with a guilty start she realized that she had been listening to something not meant for her to hear.

"Oh, what have I done! What have I done!" she whispered to herself, dropping the book and noiselessly wringing her hands. She could hear voices on the stairs now. Eugenia and Betty were coming down, and Rob's whistle down the avenue told that he was on his way to join them. Too ashamed to face any one just then, and afraid that her guilty face would betray the fact to Phil and Lloyd that she shared their secret, she hurried out of the library and up to her room, where Joyce was rearranging her hair. In response to Joyce's question about her coming up so early in the evening, she said she had thought of something she wanted to write in her journal. But when Joyce had gone down she did not begin writing immediately. Turning down the lamp until the room was almost in darkness, she sat with her elbows on the window-sill staring out into the night.

"I never meant to do it!" she kept explaining to her conscience. "It just did itself. It seemed all right to listen at first, when they were talking about things I had a right to know, and then I got so interested, it was like reading a story, and I couldn't go away because I forgot there was such a person living as me. But Lloyd mightn't understand how it was. She'd scorn to be an eavesdropper herself, and she'd scorn and despise me if she knew that I just sat there like a graven image and listened to Phil the same as propose to her."

Hitherto Mary had looked upon Malcolm as Lloyd's especial knight, and had planned to be his valiant champion should need for her services ever arise. But this put matters in a different light. All her sympathies were enlisted in Phil's behalf now. She liked Phil the best, and she wanted him to have whatever he wanted. He had called her his "angel unawares," and she wished she could do something to further deserve that title. Then she began supposing things.

Suppose she should come tripping down the stairs some day (this would be sometime in the future, of course, when Lloyd's promise to her father was no longer binding) and should find Phil pacing the room with impatient strides because the maid of honor had gone off with Sir Feal to the opera or somewhere, in preference to him, on account of some misunderstanding. "The little rift within the lute" would be making the best man's music mute, and now would be her time to play angel unawares again.

She would trip in lightly, humming a song perhaps, and finding him moody and downcast, would begin the conversation with some appropriate quotation. In looking through the dictionary the day before, her eye had caught one from Shakespeare, which she had stored away in her memory to use on some future occasion. Yes, that one would be very appropriate to begin the conversation. She would go up to him and say, archly:

"My lord leans wondrously to discontent. His comfortable temper has forsook him."

With that a smile would flit across his stern features, and presently he would be moved to confide in her, and she would encourage him. Then, she didn't know yet exactly in what way it could come about, she would do something to bring the two together again, and wipe out the bitter misunderstanding.

It was a very pleasing dream. That and others like it kept her sitting by the window till nearly bedtime. Then, just before the girls came up-stairs, she turned up the lamp and made an entry in her journal. With the fear that some prying eye might some day see that page, she omitted all names, using only initials. It would have puzzled the Sphinx herself to have deciphered that entry, unless she had guessed that the initials stood for titles instead of names. The last paragraph concluded: "It now lies between Sir F. and the B. M., but I think it will be the B. M. who will get the mantle, for Sir F. and his brother have gone away on a yachting trip. The M. of H. does not know that I know, and the secret weighs heavy on my mind."

She was in bed when the girls came up, but the door into the next room stood open and she heard Betty say, "Oh, we forgot to give you Alex Shelby's message, Lloyd. Joyce and I met him on our way to the post-office. He was walking with Bernice. He sent his greetings to the fair Elaine. He fairly raved over the way you looked in that moonlight tableau."

"It was evident that Bernice didn't enjoy his raptures very much," added Joyce. "Her face showed that she was not only bored, but displeased."

"I can imagine it," said Lloyd. "Really, girls, I think this is a serious case with Bernice. She seems to think moah of Mistah Shelby than any one who has evah gone to see her, and she is old enough now to have it mean something. She's neahly twenty, you know. I do hope he thinks as much of her as she does of him."

"There!" whispered Mary to herself, nodding wisely in the darkness of her room, as if to an unseen listener. "I knew it! I told you so! All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't make me believe she'd stoop to such a thing as that nasty Bernice Howe insinuated. She's a maid of honor in every way!"



CHAPTER X.

"A COON HUNT"

The morning after the arrival of the rest of the bridal party, Betty was out of bed at the first sound of any one stirring in the servants' quarters. She and Lloyd had given up their rooms to the new guests, and moved back into the sewing-room together. Now in order not to awaken Lloyd she tiptoed out to the little vine-covered balcony, through the window that opened into it from the sewing-room. She was in her nightgown, for she could not wait to dress, when she was so eager to find out what kind of a day Eugenia was to have for her wedding.

Not a cloud was in sight. It was as perfect as only a June morning can be, in Kentucky. The fresh smell of dewy roses and new-mown grass mingled with the pungent smoke of the wood fire, just beginning to curl up in blue rings from the kitchen chimney. Soft twitterings and jubilant bird-calls followed the flash of wings from tree to tree. She peeped out between the thick mass of wistaria vines, across the grassy court, formed by the two rear wings of the house, to another balcony opposite the one in which she stood. It opened off Eugenia's room, and was almost hidden by a climbing rose, which made a perfect bride's bower, with its gorgeous full-blown Gloire Dijon roses.

Stray rhymes and words suggestive of music and color and the morning's glory began to flit through her mind as she stood there, as if a little poem were about to start to life with a happy fluttering of wings; a madrigal of June. But in a few moments she slipped back into the house through the window, put on her kimono and slippers, and gathering up her journal in one hand and pen and ink with the other, she stole back to the balcony again. The seamstress had left her sewing-chair out there the afternoon she finished Mary's dress, and it still stood there, with the lap-board beside it. Taking the board on her knees, and opening her journal upon it, Betty perched her ink-bottle on the balcony railing and began to write. She knew there would be no time later in the day for her to bring her record up-to-date, and she did not want to let the happenings pile up unrecorded. She was afraid she might leave out something she wanted to include, and she had found that the trivial conversations and the trifles she noted were often the things which recalled a scene most vividly, and almost made it seem to live again. She began her narrative just where she had left off, so that it made a continuous story.

"We didn't settle down to anything yesterday morning. Phil went to town with Papa Jack directly after breakfast, and we girls just strolled up and down the avenue and talked. It was delightfully cool under the locusts, and we knew it would be our last morning with Eugenia; that after the arrival of the rest of the bridal party, everything would be in confusion until after the wedding, and then she would never be Eugenia Forbes again. She would be Mrs. Stuart Tremont.

"She told us that her being married wouldn't make any difference, that she'd always be the same to us. But it's bound to make a difference. A married woman can't be interested in the same things that young girls are. Her husband is bound to come first in her consideration.

"Joyce asked her if it didn't make her feel queer to know that her wedding-day was coming closer and closer, and quoted that line from 'The Siege of Lucknow,'—'Day by day the Bengal tiger nearer drew and closer crept.' She said she'd have a fit if she knew her wedding-day was creeping up on her that way. Eugenia was horrified to have her talk that way, and said that it was because she didn't know Stuart, and didn't know what it meant to care enough for a man to be glad to join her life to his, forever and ever. There was such a light in her eyes as she talked about him, that we didn't say anything more for awhile, just wondered how it must feel to be so supremely happy as she is. There is no doubt about it, he is certainly the one written for her in the stars, for he measures up to every ideal of hers, as faultlessly 'as the falcon's feathers fit the falcon.'

"We had heard so much from her and Phil about Doctor Miles Bradford, Stuart's friend who is coming with him to be one of the ushers, that we dreaded meeting him. When she told us that he is from Boston and belongs to one of its most exclusive families, and is very conventional, and twenty-five years old, Joyce nicknamed him 'The Pilgrim Father,' and vowed she wouldn't have him for her attendant; that I had to take him and let her walk in with Rob. She said she'd shock him with her wild west slang and uncivilized ways, and that I was the literary lady of the establishment, and would know how to entertain such a personage.

"I was just as much afraid of him as she was, and wanted Rob myself, so we squabbled over it all the way up and down the avenue. We were walking five abreast, swinging hands. When we got to the gate we saw some one coming up the road, and we all stood in a row, peeping out between the bars till we saw that it was Rob himself. Then Joyce said that we would make him decide the matter—that we'd all put our hands through the bars as if we had something in them, and make him choose which he'd take, right or left. If he said right, I could have him for my attendant and she'd take Doctor Bradford, but if he said left I'd have to put up with the Pilgrim Father, and she'd take Rob.



"He came along bareheaded, swinging his hat in his hand, and we were so busy explaining to him that he was to choose which hand he'd take, right or left, that we did not notice that he had a kodak hidden behind his hat. He held it up in front of him, and bowed and scraped and did all sorts of ridiculous things to keep us from noticing what he was doing, till all of a sudden we heard the shutter click and he gave a whoop and said, 'There! That will be one of the best pictures in my collection. All you girls standing with your hands stuck through the bars, like monkeys at the Zoo, begging for peanuts. I don't know whether to call it "Behind the Bars," or "Don't Feed the Animals."'

"Then Lloyd said he shouldn't come in for making such a speech, and he sat down on the grass and began to sing in a ridiculous way, the old song that goes:

"'Oh, angel, sweet angel, I pray thee Set the beautiful gates ajar.'

"He was off the key, as he usually is when he sings without an accompaniment, and it was so funny, such a howl of a song, that we laughed till the tears came. Then he said he'd name the picture 'At the Gate of Paradise,' and make a foot-note to the effect that she was a Peri, if she'd let him in.

"After awhile she said she'd let him in to Paradise if he could name one good deed he'd ever done that had benefited human kind. He said certainly he could, and that he wouldn't have to dig it up from the dead past. He could give it to her hot from the griddle, for only ten minutes before he had completed arrangements for the evening's entertainment of the bridal party.

"Lloyd opened the gate in a hurry then, and fairly begged him to come in, for we had been wild all week to know what godmother had decided upon. She only laughed when we teased her to tell us, and said we'd see. We were sure it would be something very elegant and formal. Maybe a real grown-up affair, with an orchestra from town and distinguished strangers to meet the three fathers, Eugenia's, Stuart's and the Pilgrim F.

"We couldn't believe Rob when he told us that we were to go on a coon hunt, and went racing up to the house to ask godmother herself.

"And she said yes, she was sure they would enjoy a glimpse of real country Southern life, and some of our informal fun, far more than the functions they could attend any time in the East. Besides she wanted everybody to keep in mind that we were still little schoolgirls, even if we were to be bridesmaids, and that was why she was taking us all off to the woods for an old-time country frolic, instead of having a grand dinner or a formal dance.

"Then Rob asked us if we didn't want to beg his pardon for doubting his word, but Lloyd told him no, that

"'The truth itself is not believed From one who often has deceived.'

"Then we tried to make him choose which he'd have, right or left, and held out our hands again, but he said he knew that some great question of choice was being involved, and that he would not assume the responsibility. That we'd have to draw straws, if we wanted to decide anything. So Eugenia held two blades of grass between her palms, and Joyce drew the longest one. I couldn't help groaning, for that meant that the Pilgrim Father must fall to my lot.

"But it didn't seem so bad after I met him. They all came out on the three o'clock train with Phil. When the carriage came up from the station we had a grand jubilee. Cousin Carl seemed so glad to get back to the Valley, but no gladder than everybody was to see him. Stuart is so much like Phil that we felt as if we were already acquainted with him. He is very boyish-looking and young, but there is something so dignified and gentle in his manner that one feels he is cut out to be a staid old family physician, and that in time he will grow into the love and confidence of his patients like Maclaren's Doctor of the Old School. But dear old Doctor Tremont is the flower of that family. We all fell in love with him the moment we saw him. It is easy to see what he has been to his boys. The very tone in which they call him 'Daddy' shows how they adore him; and he is so sweet and tender with Eugenia.

"Contrasted with him and Cousin Carl, I must say that the Pilgrim Father is not a suitable name for Doctor Bradford. Really, with his smooth shaven face, and clear ruddy complexion like an Englishman's, he doesn't seem much older than Malcolm. Still his dignity is rather awe-full, and his grave manner and Boston accent make him seem sort of foreign, so different from the boys whom we have always known. We were afraid at first that godmother had made a great mistake in planning to take him on a coon hunt. But it turned out that she was right, as she always is. He told us afterward he had never enjoyed anything so much in all his life.

"It was just eight o'clock when we set out on the hunt last night. A big hay-wagon drove up to the door with the party from The Beeches already stowed away in it, sitting flat on the hay in the bottom. Mrs. Walton was with them, and Miss Allison and Katie Mallard and her father, and several others they had picked up on the way.

"While they were laughing and talking and everybody was being introduced, Alec came driving up from the barn with another big wagon, and we all piled into it except Lloyd and Rob, Joyce and Phil. They were on horseback and kept alongside of us as outriders. The moon hadn't come up, but the starlight was so bright that the road gleamed like a white ribbon ahead of us, and we sang most of the way to the woods.

"Old Unc' Jefferson led the procession on his white mule, with three lanky coon dogs following. They struck the trail before we reached our stopping-place, and went dashing off into the woods. Unc' Jefferson fairly rolled off his old mule, and threw the rope bridle over the first fence-post, and went crashing through the underbrush after them. The wagons kept on a few rods farther and landed us on the creek bank, up by the black bridge.

"It seemed as if the whole itinerary of the hunt had been planned for our especial benefit, for just as we reached the creek the moon began to roll up through the trees like a great golden mill-wheel, and we could see our way about in the woods. Evidently the coon's home was in some hollow near our stopping-place, for instead of staying in the dense beech woods, up where it would have been hard for us to climb, the first dash of the dogs sent him scurrying toward the row of big sycamores that overhang the creek.

"It whizzed by us so fast that at first we did not know what had passed us till the dogs came tumbling after at breakneck speed. They were such old hands at the game that they gave their quarry a bad time of it for awhile, turning and doubling on his tracks till we were almost as excited and bewildered as the poor coon. Little Mary Ware just stood and wrung her hands, and once when the dogs were almost on him she teetered up and down on her tiptoes and squealed.

"All of a sudden the coon dodged to one side and disappeared. We thought he had escaped, but a little later on we heard the dogs baying frantically farther down the creek, and Rob shouted that they had treed him, and for everybody to hurry up if they wanted to be in at the death. So away we went, helter-skelter, in a wild race down the creek bank, godmother, Papa Jack, Cousin Carl, and everybody. It was a rough scramble, and as we pitched over rolling stones, and caught at bushes to pull ourselves up, and swung down holding on to the saplings, I wondered what Doctor Bradford would think of our tomboy ways.

"Nobody waited to be helped. It was every fellow for himself, we were in such a hurry to get to the coon. Lloyd kept far in the lead, ahead of everybody, and Joyce walked straight up a steep bank as if she had been a fly. When we got to the tree where the dogs were howling and baying we had to look a long time before we could see the coon. Then all we could distinguish was the shine of its eyeballs, for it crouched so flat against the limb that it seemed a part of the bark. It was away out on the tip-end of one of the highest branches.

"The only way to get it was to shake it down, and to our surprise, before we knew who had volunteered, we saw Doctor Bradford, in his immaculate white flannels, throw off his coat and go shinning up the tree like an acrobat in a circus. He had to shake and shake the limb before he could dislodge the coon, but at last it let go, and the dogs had it before it fairly touched the ground. We girls didn't wait to see what they did with it, but stuck our fingers in our ears and tore back to the wagons. Rob made fun of Lloyd when she said she didn't see why they couldn't have coon hunts without coon killings, and that they ought to have made the dogs let go. They had had the fun of catching it, and they ought to be satisfied with that.

"Joyce whispered to me that the hunt had had one desirable result. It had limbered up the Pilgrim Father so thoroughly, that he couldn't be stiff and dignified again after his acrobatic feat. It really did make a difference, for after that he was one of the jolliest men in the party.

"As it was out of season and old Unc' Jefferson didn't care for the coons, he called off the dogs after they had caught one, to show us what the sport was like, and then he built us a grand camp-fire on the creek bank, and we had what Mrs. Walton called the sequel. She and Miss Allison and godmother made coffee and unpacked the hampers we had brought with us. There was beaten biscuit and fried chicken and iced watermelon, and all sorts of good things. As we ate, the moon came up higher and higher, and silvered the white trunks of the sycamores till they looked like a row of ghosts standing with outstretched arms along the creek. It was so lovely there above the water. All the sweet woodsy smells of fern and mint and fallen leaves seem stronger after nightfall. Everybody enjoyed the feast so much, and was in such high spirits that we all felt a shade of regret that it had to come to an end so soon.



"There were two boats down by the bridge which we found that Rob had had sent over that morning for the occasion. They had brought the oars over in the wagon. Pretty soon we saw Eugenia and Stuart going down toward one of them, a little white canvas one, and they stepped in and rowed off down the shining waterway. It was only a narrow creek, but the moonlight seemed to glorify it, and we knew that it made them think of that boat-ride that had been the beginning of their happiness, in far-away Venice.

"The other boat was larger. Allison and Miss Bonham, Phil and Lieutenant Stanley went out in that. The music of their singing, as it floated back to us, was so beautiful, that those of us on the bank stopped talking to listen. When they came back presently, Kitty and Joyce, Rob and Lieutenant Logan pushed out in it for awhile. They sang too.

"When the little boat came back, Doctor Bradford asked Lloyd to go out with him, and she said she would as soon as she had given her chatelaine watch to her father to keep for her. The clasp kept coming unfastened and she was afraid she would lose it."

Here Betty laid down her pen a moment and sat peering dreamily out between the vines. She was about to record a little conversation she had overheard between Lloyd and her father as they stood a moment in the bushes behind her, but paused as she reflected that it would be like betraying a confidence to make an entry of it in her journal. It would be even worse, since it was no confidence of hers, but a matter lying between Lloyd and her father alone.

She sat tapping the rim of the ink-bottle with her pen as she recalled the conversation. "Yes, it's all right for you to go, Lloyd, but wait a moment. Have you my silver yardstick with you to-night, dear?"

"Why of co'se, Papa Jack. What makes you ask such a question?"

"Well," he answered, "there is so much weaving going on around you lately, and weddings are apt to put all sorts of notions into a girl's head. I just wanted to remind you that only village lads and shepherd boys are in sight, probably not even a knight, and the mantle must be worthy of a prince's wearing, you know."

Then Lloyd pretended to be hurt, and Betty could tell from her voice just how she lifted her head with an air of injured dignity.

"Remembah I gave you my promise, suh, the promise of a Lloyd. Isn't that enough?"

"More than enough, my little Hildegarde." As they stepped out of the bushes together Betty saw him playfully pinch her cheek. Then Lloyd went on down the bank. Here Betty took up her pen again.

"When she stepped into the boat the moonlight on her white dress and shining hair made her look almost as ethereal and fair as she had in the Elaine tableau. The boats could only go as far as the shallows, just a little way below the bridge, so they went back and forth a number of times, making such a pretty picture for those who waited on the bank.

"After Doctor Bradford had brought Lloyd back he asked me to go with him, and oh, it was so beautiful out there on the water. I'll enjoy the memory of it as long as I live. At first I couldn't think of anything to say, and the more I tried to think of something that would interest a man like him, the more embarrassed I grew. It was the first time I had ever tried to talk to any but old men or the home boys.

"After we had rowed a little way in silence he turned to me with the jolliest twinkle in his eyes and asked me why the boat ought to be called the Mayflower. I was so surprised, I asked him if that was a riddle, and he said no, but he wondered if I wouldn't feel that it was the Mayflower because I was adrift in it with the Pilgrim Father.

"I was so embarrassed I didn't know what to say, for I couldn't imagine how he had found out that we had called him that. I couldn't have talked to him at all if I had known what Lloyd told me afterward when we had gone to our room. It seems that by some unlucky chance he was left alone with Mary Ware for awhile before dinner. Godmother told her to entertain him, and she proceeded to do so by showing him the collection of all the kodak pictures Rob had taken of us during the house-party. After he left us yesterday morning he went straight to work to develop and print the films he had just taken, and when he brought us the copies that afternoon, we were busy, and he slipped them into the album with the others without saying anything about them. So none of us saw them until Mary came across them in showing them to Doctor Bradford.

"There was the one of us with our hands thrust through the bars, when we were trying to make Rob choose right or left, and one of Joyce and me drawing straws. Neither of us had the slightest idea that he had taken us in that act, and Mary was so surprised that she gave the whole thing away—blurted out what we were doing, before she thought that he was the Pilgrim Father. Then in her confusion, to cover up her mistake, she began to explain as only Mary Ware can, and the more she explained, the more ridiculous things she told about us. Doctor Bradford must have found her vastly entertaining from the way he laughed whenever he quoted her, which he did frequently.

"I wish she wouldn't be so alarmingly outspoken when she sings our praises to strangers. She gave him to understand that I am a full-fledged author and playwright, the peer of any poet laureate who ever held a pen; that Lloyd is a combination of princess and angel and halo-crowned saint, and Joyce a model big sister and an all-round genius. How she managed in the short time they were alone to tell him as much as she did will always remain a mystery.

"He knew all about Joyce raising bees at the Wigwam to earn money for her art lessons, and my nearly going blind at the first house-party, and why we all wear Tusitala rings. Only time will reveal what else she told. Maybe, after all, her confidences made things easier, for it gave us something to laugh about right in the beginning, and that took away the stiff feeling, and we were soon talking like old friends. By the time the boat landed I was glad that he had fallen to my lot as attendant instead of Rob, for he is so much more entertaining. He told about a moonlight ride he had on the Nile last winter when he was in Egypt, and that led us to talking of lotus flowers, and that to Tennyson's poem of the 'Lotus Eaters.' He quoted a verse from it which he said was, to him, one of the best comparisons in English verse.

"'There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night dews upon still waters, between walls Of shadowy granite in a gleaming pass. Music that gentlier on the spirit lies Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.'

"The other boat-load, far down the creek, was singing 'Sweet and low, wind of the western sea,' and he rested on his oars for us to listen. I had often repeated that verse to myself when I closed my eyes after a hard day's study. Nothing falls gentlier than tired eyelids upon tired eyes, and to have him understand the feeling and admire the poem in the same way that I did, was such a pleasant sensation, as if I had come upon a delightful unexplored country, full of pleasant surprises.

"Such thoughts as that about music are the ones I love best, and yet I never would dream of speaking of such things to Rob or Malcolm, who are both old and dear friends.

"After all, the coon hunt proved a very small part of the evening's entertainment, and he must have liked it, for I heard him say to godmother, as he bade her good night, that if this was a taste of real Kentucky life, he would like a steady diet of it all the rest of his days."



CHAPTER XI.

THE FOUR-LEAVED CLOVER

As Betty carefully blotted the last page and placed the stopper in the ink-bottle, the clock in the hall began to strike, and she realized that she must have been writing fully an hour. The whole household was astir now. She would be late to breakfast unless she hurried with her dressing.

Steps on the gravelled path below the balcony made her peep out between the vines. Stuart and Doctor Bradford were coming back from an early stroll about the place. The wistaria clung too closely to the trellis for them to see her, but, as they crossed the grassy court between the two wings, they looked up at Eugenia's balcony opposite. Betty looked too. That bower of golden-hearted roses had drawn her glances more than once that morning. Now in the midst of it, in a morning dress of pink, fresh and fair as a blossom herself, stood Eugenia, reaching up for a half-blown bud above her head. Her sleeves fell back from her graceful white arms, and as she broke the bud from its stem a shower of rose-petals fell on her dusky hair and upturned face.

Then Betty saw that Doctor Bradford had passed on into the house, leaving Stuart standing there with his hat in his hand, smiling up at the beautiful picture above him.

"Good morrow, Juliet," he called, softly. "Happy is the bride the sun shines on. Was there ever such a glorious morning?"

"It's perfect," answered Eugenia, leaning out of her rose bower to smile down at him.

"I wonder if the bride's happiness measures up to the morning," he asked. "Mine does."

For answer she glanced around, her finger on her lips as if to warn him that walls have ears, and then with a light little laugh tossed the rosebud down to him. "Wait! I'll come and tell you," she said.

Betty, gathering up her writing material, saw him catch the rose, touch it to his lips and fasten it in his coat. Then, conscience-smitten that she had seen the little by-play not intended for other eyes, she bolted back into her room through the window, so hurriedly that she struck her head against the sash with a force which made her see stars for several minutes.

The first excitement after breakfast was the arrival of the bride's cake. Aunt Cindy had baked it, the bride herself had stirred the charms into it, but it had been sent to Louisville to be iced. Lloyd called the entire family into the butler's pantry to admire it, as it sat imposingly on a huge silver salver.

"It looks as if it might have come out of the Snow Queen's palace," she said, "instead of the confectionah's. Wouldn't you like to see the place where those snow-rose garlands grow?"

"Somebody take Phil away from it! Quick!" said Stuart. "Once I had a birthday cake iced in pink with garlands of white sugar roses all around it, and he sneaked into the pantry before the party and picked off so many of the roses that it looked as if a mouse had nibbled the edges. Aunt Patricia put him to bed and he missed the party, but we couldn't punish him that way if he should spoil the wedding cake, because we need his services as best man. So we'd better remove him from temptation."

"Look here, son," answered Phil, taking Stuart by the shoulders and pushing him ahead of him. "When it comes to raking up youthful sins you'd better lie low. 'I could a tale unfold' that would make Eugenia think that this is 'a fatal wedding morn,' If she knew all she wouldn't have you."

"Then you sha'n't tell anything," declared Lloyd. "I'm not going to be cheated out of my share of the wedding, no mattah what a dahk past eithah of you had. Forget it, and come and help us hunt the foah-leaf clovahs that Eugenia wants for the dream-cake boxes."

"What are they?" asked Miles Bradford, as he edged out of the pantry after the others. Mary happened to be the one in front of him, and she turned to answer, pointing to one of the shelves, where lay a pile of tiny heart-shaped boxes, tied with white satin ribbons.

"Each guest is to have one of those," she explained. "There'll be a piece of wedding cake in it, and a four-leaf clover if we can find enough to go around. Most people don't have the clovers, but Eugenia heard about them, and she wants to try all the customs that everybody ever had. You put it under your pillow for three nights, and whatever you dream will come true. If you dream about the same person all three nights, that is the one you will marry."

"Horrible!" exclaimed he, laughing. "Suppose one has nightmares. Will they come true?"

Mary nodded gravely. "Mom Beck says so, and Eliot. So did old Mrs. Bisbee. She's the one that told Eugenia about the clovers. There was one with her piece of cake from her sister's wedding, that she dreamed on nearly fifty years ago. She dreamed of Mr. Bisbee three nights straight ahead, and she said there never was a more fortunate wedding. They'll celebrate their golden anniversary soon."

"Miss Mary," asked her listener, solemnly, "do you girls really believe all these signs and wonders? I have heard more queer superstitions the few hours I have been in this Valley, than in all my life before."

"Oh, no, we don't really believe in them. Only the darkies do that. But you can't help feeling more comfortable when they 'point right' for you than when they don't; like seeing the new moon over your right shoulder, you know. And it's fun to try all the charms. Eugenia says so many brides have done it that it seems a part of the performance, like the veil and the trail and the orange-blossoms."

They passed from the dining-room into the hall, then out on to the front porch, where they stood waiting for Joyce and Eugenia to get their hats. While they waited, Rob Moore joined them, and they explained the quest they were about to start upon.

"Where are you going to take us, Miss Lloyd?" asked Miles Bradford. "According to the old legend the four-leaved clover is to be found only in Paradise."

"Oh, do you know a legend about it?" asked Betty, eagerly. "I've always thought there ought to be one."

"Then you must read the little book, Miss Betty, called 'Abdallah, or the Four-leaved Shamrock.' Abdallah was a son of the desert who spent his life in a search for the lucky shamrock. He had been taught that it was the most beautiful flower of Paradise. One leaf was red like copper, another white like silver, the third yellow like gold, and the fourth was a glittering diamond. When Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden, poor Eve reached out and clutched at a blossom to carry away with her. In her despair she did not notice what she plucked, but, as she passed through the portal, curiosity made her open her hand to look at the flower she had snatched. To her joy it was the shamrock. But while she looked, a gust of wind caught up the diamond leaf and blew it back within the gates, just as they closed behind her. The name of that leaf was Perfect Happiness. That is why men never find it in this world for all their searching. It is to be found only in Paradise."

"Oh, but I don't believe that!" cried Lloyd. "Lots and lots of times I have been perfectly happy, and I am suah that everybody must be at some time or anothah in this world."

"Yes, but you didn't stay happy, did you?" asked Joyce, who had come back in time to hear part of the legend. "We get glimpses of it now and then, as poor Eve did when she opened her hand, but part of it always flies away while we are looking at it. People can be contented all the time, and happy in a mild way, but nobody can be perfectly, radiantly happy all the time, day in and day out. The legend is right. It is only in Paradise that one can find the diamond leaf."

"Joyce talks as if she were a hundred yeahs old," laughed Lloyd, looking up at Doctor Bradford. "Maybe there is some truth in yoah old Oriental legend, but I believe times have changed since Abdallah went a-hunting. Phil and I came across a song the othah day that I want you all to heah. Maybe it will make you change yoah minds."

Phil protested with many grimaces and much nonsense that he "could not sing the old songs now." That he would not "be butchered to make a Roman holiday." But all the time he protested, he was stepping toward the piano in a fantastic exaggerated cake-walk that set his audience to laughing. At the first low notes of the accompaniment, he dropped his foolishness and began to sing in a full, sweet voice that brought the old Colonel to the door of his den to listen. Eliot, packing trunks in the upper hall, leaned over the banister:

"I know a place where the sun is like gold, And the cherry blooms burst with snow. And down underneath is the loveliest nook Where the four-leaf clovers grow.

"One leaf is for hope and one is for faith, And one is for love you know, And God put another one in for luck. If you search you will find where they grow.

"And you must have hope and you must have faith. You must love and be strong, and so If you work, if you wait, you will find the place Where the four-leaf clovers grow."

It was a sweet, haunting melody that accompanied the words, and the gay party of nine, strolling toward the orchard, hummed it all the way.

There in the shade of the big apple-trees, where the clover grew in thick patches, they began their search; all together at first, then in little groups of twos and threes, until they had hunted over the entire orchard. Stuart, who had been doing more talking than hunting, went to groping industriously around on his hands and knees, when they all came together again after an hour's search.

"Bradford," he said, emphatically, "I am beginning to think that you and Miss Joyce are right, and that Paradise has a monopoly on the four-leaf kind. I haven't caught a glimpse of one. Not even its shadow."

Lloyd held up a handful. "I found them in several places, thick as hops."

"Which goes to show," he insisted, "that the song, 'If you work, if you wait, you will find the place,' is all a delusion and a snare. You all have worked, and Eugenia and I have waited, and only you, who are 'bawn lucky,' have found any. It's pure luck."

"No," interrupted Miles Bradford, "you can't call strolling around a shady orchard with a pretty girl work, and the song does correspond with the legend. Abdallah worked hard for his first leaf, dug a well with which to bless the thirsty desert for all time. The bit of copper was at the bottom of it. The effort he made for the second almost cost him his life. He rescued a poor slave girl in order to be faithful to a trust imposed in him, and taught her the truths of Allah. The silver leaf was his reward. He found it in the heathen fetish which she gave him in her gratitude. It had been her god.

"I am not sure about the golden leaf, but I think it was the reward of living a wise and honorable life. The day of his birth it was said that he alone wept, while all around him rejoiced; and he resolved to live so well that at the day of his death he should have no cause for tears, and all around him should mourn. No, I'll not have you belittling my hero, Tremont. There was no luck about it whatsoever. He won the first three leaves by unselfish service, faithfulness to every trust, and wise, honorable living, so that he well deserved that Paradise should bring him perfect happiness."

"Girls!" cried Betty, her face lighting up, "we must be warm on the trail, with our Tusitala rings, our Warwick Hall motto, and our Order of Hildegarde. A Road of the Loving Heart is as hard to dig in every one's memory as a well in the desert. If we keep the tryst in all things, we're bound to find the silver leaf, and think of the wisdom it takes to weave with the honor of a Hildegarde!"

Eugenia interrupted her: "Oh, Betty, please write a legend of the shamrock for girls that will fit modern times. In the old style there are always three brothers or three maidens who start out to find a thing, and only the last one or the youngest one is successful. The others all come to grief. In yours give everybody a chance to be happy.

"There is no reason why every maiden shouldn't find the leaves according to the Tusitala rings and Ederyn's motto and Hildegarde's yardstick. And then, don't you see, they needn't wait till the end of their lives for the diamond, for the prince will bring it! Don't you see? It is his coming that makes the perfect happiness!"

Phil laughed. "Stuart's face shows how he appreciates that compliment," he said, "and as for me and all the other sons of Adam, oh, fair layde, I make my bow!" Springing to his feet, he swept her an elaborate curtsey, holding out his coat as if it were the ball-gown of some stately dame in a minuet.

Lloyd, sitting on the grass with her hands clasped on her knees, looked around the circle of smiling faces, and then gave her shoulders a whimsical shrug.

"That's all right if the prince comes," she exclaimed. "But how is one to get the diamond leaf if he doesn't? Mammy Eastah told my fortune in a teacup, and she said: 'I see a risin' sun, and a row of lovahs, but I don't see you a-takin' any of 'em, honey. Yo' ways am ways of pleasantness, and all yo' paths is peace, but I'se powahful skeered you'se goin' to be an ole maid. I sholy is, if the teacup signs p'int right.'"

"It will be your own fault, then," answered Phil. "The row of lovers is there in the teacup for you. You've only to take your pick."

"But," began Rob, "maybe it is just as well that she shouldn't choose any of them. The prince's coming doesn't always bring happiness. Look at old Mr. Deckly. For thirty years he and his fair bride have led a regular cat and dog life. And there are the Twicketts and the Graysons and the Blackstones right in this one little valley, to say nothing of all the troubles one reads of in the papers."

"No!" contradicted Eugenia, emphatically. "You have no right to hold them up as examples. It is plainly to be seen that Mrs. Deckly and Mrs. Twickett and Mrs. Grayson and Mrs. Blackstone were not Hildegardes. They failed to earn their third leaf by doing their weaving wisely. They didn't use their yardsticks. They looked only at the 'village churls,' and wove their webs to fit their unworthy shoulders, so that the men they married were not princes, and they couldn't bring the diamond leaf."

"The name of the prince need not always be Man, need it?" ventured Joyce. "Couldn't it be Success? It seems to me that if I had struggled along for years, trying to make the most of my little ability, had worked just as faithfully and wisely at my art as I could, it would be perfect happiness to have the world award me the place of a great artist. It would be as much to me as the diamond leaf that marriage could bring. I should think you'd feel that way, too, Betty, about your writing. There are marriages that are failures just as there are artistic and literary careers that are failures, and there are diamond leaves to reward the work and waiting of old maids, just as there are diamond leaves to reward the Hildegardes who use their yardsticks. Sometimes there are girls who don't marry because they sacrifice their lives to taking care of their families, or living for those who are dependent on them. Surely there must be a blessedness and a happiness for them greater than any diamond leaf a prince could bring."

"There is probably," answered Eugenia, "but it seems as if most people of that kind have to wait till they get to Paradise to find it."

"I don't think so," said Betty. "I believe all the dear old-maid aunts and daughters, who earn the first three leaves, find the fourth waiting somewhere in this world. It is only the selfish ones, who slight their share of the duties life imposes on every one, who are cross and unlovely and unloved. They probably would not have been happy wives if they had married."

"Well, but what about me!" persisted Lloyd. "I nevah expect to have a career, so Success in big lettahs will nevah bring me a medal or a chromo. I am not sacrificing my life for anybody's comfort, and I can nevah have any little nieces and nephews to whom I can be one of those deah old aunts Betty talks about, and there is that dreadful teacup!"

She did not hear Doctor Bradford's laughing answer, for Phil, turning his back on the others, looked down into her upturned face and began to hum, as if to himself, "From the desert I come to thee!" Only Mary understood the significance of it as Lloyd did, and she knew why Lloyd suddenly turned away and began passing her hands over the grass around her, as if resuming her search. She wanted to hide her face, into which the color was creeping.

A train whistled somewhere far across the orchard, and Rob took out his watch. The sight of it suggested something in line with the conversation, for when he had noted the time, he touched the spring that opened the back of the case.

"Never you mind, Little Colonel," he said, in a patronizing, big-brotherly tone. "If nobody else will stand between you and that teacup, I'll come to the rescue. Bobby won't go back on his old chum. I'll bring you a four-leaf clover. Here's one, all ready and waiting."

Lloyd looked across at the watch he held out to her. "Law, Bobby," she exclaimed, giving him the old name she had called him when they first played together, "I supposed you had lost that clovah long ago."

"Not much," he answered. "It's the finest hoodoo ever was. It helped me through high school. I swear I never could have passed in Latin but for your good-luck charm. It's certainly to my interest to hang on to it.

"Think of it, Mary," he added, seeing that her eyes were round with interest, "that was given to me by a princess."

Mary darted a quick look at Lloyd and another one at him to see if he were teasing.

"Oh, I see!" she remarked, in a tone of enlightenment.

"What do you see?" he demanded, laughing.

She would not answer, but, ignoring his further attempts to make her talk, she, too, turned again to search for clovers, inwardly excited over the discovery she thought she had made. She would make a note of it in her journal, she decided, something like this: "The plot thickens. The B. M. and Sir F. have a rival they little suspect. R. carries the charm the M. of H. gave him in years gone by, and I can see many reasons why he should be the one to bring her the diamond leaf."

Only two dozen clovers rewarded their united search, but Eugenia was satisfied. "We'll put them in the boxes haphazard," she said, "and the uncertainty of getting one will make it more exciting than if there were one for every box."

The path back to the house led past the kitchen, where several colored women were helping Aunt Cindy. Just as they passed, one of them put her head out of the door to call to a group of children crowded around one of the windows of the great house. They were watching the decorators at work inside the drawing-room, hanging the gate of roses in the arch. The youngest one was perched on a barrel that had been dragged up for that purpose, so that his older brothers and sisters might be spared the weariness of holding him up to see. A narrow board laid across the top made an uneasy and precarious perch for him. He was seated astride, with his bare black legs dangling down inside the barrel.

"You M'haley Gibbs," called the woman, "don't you let Ca'line Allison lean agin that bo'd. It'll upset Sweety into the bar'l."

Her warning came too late, for even as she called the slight board was pushed off its foundations by the weight of the roly-poly Ca'line Allison, and the pickaninny went down into the barrel as suddenly as a candle is snuffed out by the wind.

"You M'haley, I'll natcherly lay you out," shrieked the woman, hurrying up the path to the rescue. But M'haley, made agile by fifteen years of constant practice, dodged the cuffing as it was about to descend, and scuttled around the house to wait till Sweety stopped howling.

"They are Sylvia Gibbs's children," said Lloyd, in answer to Doctor Bradford's astonished comment at seeing so many little negroes in a row. "They can scent a pahty five miles away, and they hang around like little black buzzahds waiting for scraps of the feast. I suppose they feel they have a right to be heah to-day, as Sylvia is helping in the kitchen. They're the same children, Eugenia," she added, "who were heah so much when I had my first house-pahty. M'haley is the one who brought you that awful, skinny, mottled chicken in a bandbox for you to 'take home on the kyers fo' a pet,' she said."

"So she is!" exclaimed Eugenia, as they passed around the corner of the house and caught sight of M'haley, who was peeping out to see if the storm was over, and if it would be safe to return to the sightseeing at the window. Her teeth and eyeballs were a-shine with pleasure when Eugenia passed on, after a pleasant greeting and some reference to the chicken. She felt it a great honor to be remembered by the bride, and thanked again, after all these years, for her parting gift. She gave a little giggle when Lloyd came up, and said, with a coy self-conscious air that was extremely amusing to the Northern man, who had never met this type of the race before, "I'se a maid of honah, too, Miss Lloyd."

"You are!" was the surprised answer. "How does that happen?"

"Mammy's gwine to git married agin, to Mistah Robinson, and she says nobody has a bettah right than me to be maid of honah to her own ma's weddin'. So that's how come she toted us all along to you-all's weddin', so that Sweety and Ca'line and the boys could learn how to act at her and Mistah Robinson's."

"When is it to be?" inquired Lloyd.

"To-morrow night. Mammy's done give her fish-fry and ice-cream festible, and she cleahed enough to pay the weddin' expenses. You-all's suah gwine to git an invite, Miss Lloyd."

"It is sort of a benefit," Betty explained to Miles Bradford, as they walked on. "Instead of giving a concert or a recital, the colored people here give a fish-fry and festival whenever they are in need of money. They used to have them just to raise funds for the church, but now it is quite popular for individuals to give them when there is a funeral or a wedding to be paid for. I am so glad you are going to stay over a few days. We can show you sights you've never dreamed of in the North."

Eugenia, first to step into the hall, gave a cry of pleasure. The florist and his assistants had been there in their absence, and were just leaving. They had turned the entire house into a rose-garden. Hall, drawing-room, and library, and the dining-room beyond were filled with such lavishness that it seemed as if June herself had taken possession, with all her court. Stuart and Eugenia paused before the tall gate of smilax and American beauties.

"It is the Gate into Paradise, sweetheart," he whispered, looking through its blossom-covered bars to the altar beyond, that had been built in the bay-window of the drawing-room, and covered with white roses.

"Yes," answered Eugenia, smiling up at him. "The legend is right. We must enter Paradise to find the diamond leaf. But I was right, too. It is my prince who will bring mine to me."



CHAPTER XII.

THE WEDDING

Lunch was served on the porch, for the tables for the wedding supper were already spread in the dining-room, and Alec had locked the doors that nothing might disturb its perfect order.

"I think we are really going to be able to avoid that last wild rush which usually accompanies home weddings," said Mrs. Sherman, as they sat leisurely talking over the dessert. "Usually the bridesmaids' gloves are missing, or the bride's slippers have been packed into one of the trunks and sent on ahead to the depot. But this time I have tried to have everything so perfectly arranged that the wedding will come to pass as quietly and naturally as a flower opens. I want to have everything give the impression of having bloomed into place."

"Eliot and Mom Beck are certainly doing their part to make such an impression," said Eugenia. "Eliot has already counted over every article I am to wear, a dozen times, and they're all laid out in readiness, even to the 'something blue.'"

"Oh, that reminds me!" began Lloyd, then stopped abruptly. Nobody noticed the exclamation, however, but Mary, and, with swift intuition, she guessed what the something blue had suggested to the maid of honor. It was that bit of turquoise that caused the only scramble in the preparations, for Lloyd could not remember where she had put it.

"I was suah I dropped it into one of the boxes in my top bureau drawer," she said to herself on the way up-stairs. Then, with her finger on her lip, she stopped on the threshold of the sewing-room to consider. She remembered that when she gave up her room to the guests, all the boxes had been taken out of that drawer. Some of them had been put in the sewing-room closet, and some carried to a room at the end of the back hall, where trunks and hampers were stored.

Now, while Betty was down-stairs, helping with a few last details, Lloyd took advantage of her absence to search all the boxes in the closet and drawers of the sewing-room, but the missing turquoise was not in any of them.

"I know I ought to be taking a beauty sleep," she thought, "so I'll be all fresh and fine for the evening, but I must find it, for I promised Phil I'd wear it."

In the general shifting of furniture to accommodate so many guests, several articles had found their way back among the trunks. Among them was an old rocking-chair. It was drawn up to the window now, and, as Lloyd pushed open the door, to her surprise she found Mary Ware half-hidden in its roomy depths. She was tilted back in it with a book in her hands.

Mary was as surprised as Lloyd. She had been so absorbed in the story that she did not hear the knob turn, and as the hinges suddenly creaked, she started half out of her chair.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, settling back when she saw it was only Lloyd. "You frightened me nearly out of my wits. I didn't know that anybody ever came in here." Then she seemed to feel that some explanation of her presence was necessary.

"I came in here because our room is full of clothes, spread out ready to wear. They're all over the room,—mine on one side and Joyce's on the other. I was so afraid I'd forget and flop down on them, or misplace something, that I came in here to read awhile. It makes the afternoon go faster. Seems to me it never will be time to dress."

Lloyd stood looking at the shelves around the room, then said: "If time hangs so heavy on yoah hands, I believe I'll ask you to help me hunt for something I have lost. It's just a trifle, and maybe it is foolish for me to try to find it now, when everything is in such confusion, but it is something that I want especially."

"I'd love to help hunt," exclaimed Mary, putting down her book and holding out her arms to take the boxes which Lloyd was reaching down from the shelves. One by one she piled them on a packing-trunk behind her, and then climbed up beside them, sitting Turk fashion in their midst, and leaving the chair by the window for Lloyd.

"It's just a scrap of unset turquoise," explained Lloyd, as she unwrapped a small package, "no larger than one of the beads on this fan-chain. I was in a big hurry when I dropped it into my drawer, and I didn't notice which box I put it in. So we'll have to take out all these ribbons and laces and handkerchiefs and sachet-bags."

It was the first time during her visit that Mary had been entirely alone with her adored Princess, and to be with her now in this intimate way, smoothing her dainty ribbons, peeping into her private boxes, and handling her pretty belongings, gave her a pleasure that was indescribable.

"Shall I open this, too?" she asked, presently, picking up a package wrapped in an old gauze veil.

Lloyd glanced up. "Yes; although I haven't the slightest idea what it can be."

A faint, delicious odor stole out as Mary unwound the veil, an odor of sandalwood, that to her was always suggestive of the "Arabian Nights," of beautiful Oriental things, and of hidden treasures in secret panels of old castles.

"I've hunted for that box high and low!" cried Lloyd, reaching forward to take it. "Mom Beck must have wrapped it so, to keep the dust out of the carving. I nevah thought of looking inside that old veil for anything of any account. I think moah of what it holds than any othah ornament I own."

Mary watched her curiously as she threw back the lid and lifted out a necklace of little Roman pearls. Lloyd dangled it in front of her, lifting the shining string its full length, then letting it slip back into her palm, where it lay a shimmering mass of tiny lustrous spheres. Regarding it intently, she said, with one of those unaccountable impulses which sometimes seize people:

"Mary, I've a great mind to tell you something I've nevah yet told a soul,—how it was I came to make this necklace. I believe I'll weah it when I stand up at the altah with Eugenia. It seems the most appropriate kind of a necklace that a maid of honah could weah."

The story of Ederyn and the king's tryst was fresh in Mary's mind, for Betty had told it at the lunch-table half an hour before, in answer to Doctor Bradford's question about the motto of Warwick Hall; the motto which Betty declared was a surer guide-post to the silver leaf of the magic shamrock than the one Abdallah followed.

"I can't undahstand," began Lloyd, "why I should be telling this to a little thing like you, when I hid it from Betty as if it were a crime. I knew she would think it a beautiful idea,—marking each day with a pearl when its duties had been well done, but I was half-afraid that she would think it conceited of me—conceited for me to count that any of my days were perfect enough to be marked with a pearl. But it wasn't that I thought them so. It was only that I tried my hardest to make the most of them,—in my classes and every way, you know."

As Lloyd went on, telling of the times she had failed and times she had succeeded, Mary felt as if she were listening to the confessions of a white Easter lily. It seemed perfectly justifiable to her that Lloyd should have had tantrums, and stormed at the doctor when he forbade her going back to school after the Christmas vacation, and that she should have cried and moped and made everybody around her miserable for days. Mary's overweening admiration for the Princess carried her to the point of feeling that everybody ought to be miserable when she was unhappy. In Mary's opinion it was positively saintly of her the way she took up her rosary again after awhile, trying to string it with tokens of days spent unselfishly at home; days unstained by regrets and tears and idle repinings for what could not be helped.

Mary laughed over the story of one hard-earned pearl, the day spent in making pies and cleaning house for the disagreeable old Mrs. Perkins, who didn't want to be reformed, and who wouldn't stay clean.

"I haven't the faintest idea why I told you all this," said Lloyd at last, once more lifting the string to watch the light shimmer along its lustrous length. "But now you see why I prize this little rosary so highly. It was what lifted me out of my dungeon of disappointment."

Afterward Mary thought of a dozen things she wished she had said to Lloyd while they were there together in the privacy of the trunk-room. She wished she had let her know in some way how much she admired her, and longed to be like her, and how she was going to try all the rest of her life to be a real maid of honor, worthy in every way of her love and confidence. But some shy, unusual feeling of constraint crowded the unspoken words back into her throbbing little throat, and the opportunity passed.

Clasping the pearls around her neck, Lloyd picked up the sandalwood box again and shook it. "Heah's a lot of loose beads of all kinds, with as many colahs as a kaleidoscope. You do bead-work, don't you, Mary? You may have these if you can use them."

In response to her eager acceptance, Lloyd looked around for something to pour the beads into. "There's an empty cologne bottle on that shelf above yoah head. If you will reach it down, I'll poah them into that."

Beads of various sizes and colors, from garnet to amber, poured in a rainbow stream from the box to the wide-necked bottle. Here and there was the glint of cut steel and the gleam of crystal, and several times Mary noticed a little Roman pearl like those on the rosary, and thought with a thrill of the necklace she intended to begin making that very day. Suddenly Lloyd gave an exclamation and reversed the gay-colored stream, pouring it slowly back into the box from the bottle.

"I thought I saw that turquoise," she cried. "I remembah now, it was in my hand when I took off my necklace, and I must have dropped them in heah togethah."

She parted the beads with a cautious forefinger, pushing them aside one at a time. Presently a bit of blue rolled uppermost, and she looked up triumphantly. "There it is!"

Mary flushed guiltily at sight of the turquoise, wondering what Lloyd would think if she knew that she had overheard what Phil had said about that bit of something blue. She went back to her chair and her book by the window after Lloyd left, but the book lay unopened in her lap. She had many things to think of while she slowly turned the bottle between herself and the light and watched its shifting colors. Several times a black bead appeared among the others.

"I'd have had to use black beads more than once," she reflected, "if I had been making a rosary, for there's the day I was so rude to Girlie Dinsmore, and the awful time when I got so interested that I eavesdropped."

* * * * *

The wedding was all that Mrs. Sherman had planned, everything falling into place as beautifully and naturally as the unfolding of a flower. The assembled guests seated in the great bower of roses heard a low, soft trembling of harp-strings deepen into chords. Then to this accompaniment two violins began the wedding-march, and the great gate of roses swung wide. As Stuart and his best man entered from a side door and took their places at the altar in front of the old minister, the rest of the bridal party came down the stairs: Betty and Miles Bradford first, Joyce and Rob, then the maid of honor walking alone with her armful of roses. After her came the bride with her hand on her father's arm.

Just at that instant some one outside drew back the shutters in the bay-window, and a flood of late afternoon sunshine streamed across the room, the last golden rays of the perfect June day making a path of light from the gate of roses to the white altar. It shone full across Eugenia's face, down on the long-trained shimmering satin, the little gleaming slippers, the filmy veil that enveloped her, the pearls that glimmered white on her white throat.

Eliot, standing in a corner, nervously watching every movement with twitching lips, relaxed into a smile. "It's a good omen!" she said, half under her breath, then gave a startled glance around to see if any one had heard her speak at such an improper time.

The music grew softer now, so faint and low it seemed the mere shadow of sound. Above the rare sweetness of that undertone of harp and violins rose the words of the ceremony: "I, Stuart, take thee, Eugenia, to be my wedded wife."

Mary, standing at her post by the rose gate, felt a queer little chill creep over her. It was so solemn, so very much more solemn than she had imagined it would be. She wondered how she would feel if the time ever came for her to stand in Eugenia's place, and plight her faith to some man in that way—"for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death us do part."

Eliot was crying softly in her corner now. Yes, getting married was a terribly solemn thing. It didn't end with the ceremony and the pretty clothes and the shower of congratulations. That was only the beginning. "For better, for worse,"—that might mean all sorts of trouble and heartache. "Sickness and death,"—it meant to be bound all one's life to one person, morning, noon, and night. How very, very careful one would have to be in choosing,—and then suppose one made a mistake and thought the man she was marrying was good and honest and true, and he wasn't! It would be all the same, for "for better, for worse," ran the vow, "until death us do part."

Then and there, holding fast to the gate of roses, Mary made up her mind that she could never, never screw her courage up to the point of taking the vows Eugenia was taking, as she stood with her hand clasped in Stuart's, and the late sunshine of the sweet June day streaming down on her like a benediction.

"It's lots safer to be an old maid," thought Mary. "I'll take my chances getting the diamond leaf some other way than marrying. Anyhow, if I ever should make a choice, I'll ask somebody else's opinion, like I do when I go shopping, so I'll be sure I'm getting a real prince, and not an imitation one."

It was all over in another moment. Harp and violins burst into the joyful notes of Mendelssohn's march, and Stuart and Eugenia turned from the altar to pass through the rose gate together. Lloyd and Phil followed, then the other attendants in the order of their entrance. On the wide porch, screened and canopied with smilax and roses, a cool green out-of-doors reception-room had been made. Here they stood to receive their guests.

Mary, in all the glory of her pink chiffon dress and satin slippers, stood at the end of the receiving line, feeling that this one experience was well worth the long journey from Arizona. So thoroughly did she delight in her part of the affair, and so heartily did she enter into her duties, that more than one guest passed on, smiling at her evident enjoyment.

"I wish this wedding could last a week," she confided to Lieutenant Logan, when he paused beside her. "Don't you know, they did in the fairy-tales, some of them. There was 'feasting and merrymaking for seventy days and seventy nights.' This one is going by so fast that it will soon be train-time. I don't suppose they care," she added, with a nod toward the bride, "for they're going to spend their honeymoon in a Gold of Ophir rose-garden, where there are goldfish in the fountains, and real orange-blossoms. It's out in California, at Mister Stuart's grandfather's. Elsie, his sister, couldn't come, so they're going out to see her, and take her a piece of every kind of cake we have to-night, and a sample of every kind of bonbon. Don't you wonder who'll get the charms in the bride's cake? That's the only reason I am glad the clock is going so fast. It will soon be time to cut the cake, and I'm wild to see who gets the things in it."

The last glow of the sunset was still tinting the sky with a tender pink when they were summoned to the dining-room, but indoors it had grown so dim that a hundred rose-colored candles had been lighted. Again the music of harp and violins floated through the rose-scented rooms. As Mary glanced around at the festive scene, the tables gleaming with silver and cut glass, the beautiful costumes, the smiling faces, a line from her old school reader kept running through her mind: "And all went merry as a marriage-bell! And all went merry as a marriage-bell!"

It repeated itself over and over, through all the gay murmur of voices as the supper went on, through the flowery speech of the old Colonel when he stood to propose a toast, through the happy tinkle of laughter when Stuart responded, through the thrilling moment when at last the bride rose to cut the mammoth cake. In her nervous excitement, Mary actually began to chant the line aloud, as the first slice was lifted from the great silver salver: "All went merry—" Then she clapped her hand over her mouth, but nobody had noticed, for Allison had drawn the wedding-ring, and a chorus of laughing congratulations was drowning out every other sound.

As the cake passed on from guest to guest, Betty cried out that she had found the thimble. Then Lloyd held up the crystal charm, the one the bride had said was doubly lucky, because it held imbedded in its centre a four-leaved clover. Nearly every slice had been crumbled as soon as it was taken, in search of a hidden token, but Mary, who had not dared to hope that she might draw one, began leisurely eating her share. Suddenly her teeth met on something hard and flat, and glancing down, she saw the edge of a coin protruding from the scrap of cake she held.

"Oh, it's the shilling!" she exclaimed, in such open-mouthed astonishment that every one laughed, and for the next few moments she was the centre of the congratulations. Eugenia took a narrow white ribbon from one of the dream-cake boxes, and passed it through the hole in the shilling, so that she could hang it around her neck.

"Destined to great wealth!" said Rob, with mock solemnity. "I always did think I'd like to marry an heiress. I'll wait for you, Mary."

"No," interrupted Phil, laughing, "fate has decreed that I should be the lucky man. Don't you see that it is Philip's head with Mary's on that shilling?"

"Whew!" teased Kitty. "Two proposals in one evening, Mary. See what the charm has done for you already!"

Mary knew that they were joking, but she turned the color of her dress, and sat twiddling the coin between her thumb and finger, too embarrassed to look up. They sat so long at the table that it was almost train-time when Eugenia went up-stairs to put on her travelling-dress. She made a pretty picture, pausing midway up the stairs in her bridal array, the veil thrown back, and her happy face looking down on the girls gathered below. Leaning far over the banister with the bridal bouquet in her hands, she called:

"Now look, ye pretty maidens, standing all a-row, The one who catches this, the next bouquet shall throw."

There was a laughing scramble and a dozen hands were outstretched to receive it. "Oh, Joyce caught it! Joyce caught it!" cried Mary, dancing up and down on the tips of her toes, and clapping her hands over her mouth to stifle the squeal of delight that had almost escaped. "Now, some day I can be maid of honor."

"So that's why you are so happy over your sister's good fortune, is it?" asked Phil, bent on teasing her every time opportunity offered.

"No," was the indignant answer. "That is some of the reason, but I'm gladdest because she didn't get left out of everything. She didn't get one of the cake charms, so I hoped she would catch the bouquet."

When the carriage drove away at last, a row of shiny black faces was lined up each side of the avenue. All the Gibbs children were there, and Aunt Cindy's other grandchildren, with their hands full of rice.

"Speed 'em well, chillun!" called old Cindy, waving her apron. The rice fell in showers on the top of the departing carriage, and two little white slippers were sent flying along after it, with such force that they nearly struck Eliot, sitting beside the coachman. Tired as she was, she turned to smile approval, for the slippers were a good omen, too, in her opinion, and she was happy to think that everything about her Miss Eugenia's wedding had been carried out properly, down to this last propitious detail.

As the slippers struck the ground, quick as a cat, M'haley darted forward to grab them. "Them slippahs is mates!" she announced, gleefully, "and I'm goin' to tote 'em home for we-all's wedding. I kain't squeeze into 'em myself, but Ca'line Allison suah kin."

Once more, and for the last time, Eugenia leaned out of the carriage to look back at the dear faces she was leaving. But there was no sadness in the farewell. Her prince was beside her, and the Gold of Ophir rose-garden lay ahead.



CHAPTER XIII.

DREAMS AND WARNINGS

"It's all ovah now!" exclaimed Lloyd, stifling a yawn and looking around the deserted drawing-room, where the candles burned low in their sconces, and the faded roses were dropping their petals on the floor. Mr. Forbes and Doctor Tremont had just driven away to catch the midnight express for New York, and the last guest but Rob had departed.

"It's all over with that gown of yours, too, isn't it?" asked Phil, glancing at the airy pink skirt, down whose entire front breadth ran a wide, zigzag rent. "It's too bad, for it's the most becoming one I've seen you wear yet. I'm sorry it must be retired from public life so early in its career."

Lloyd drew the edges of the largest holes together. "Yes, it's ruined beyond all hope, for I stepped cleah through it when I tripped on the stairs, and it pulled apart in at least a dozen places, just as a thin veil would. But you'll see it again, and on anothah maid of honah. M'haley nevah waited to see if I was hurt, but pounced on it and began to beg for it befoah I got my breath again. She said she could fix it good enough for her to weah to her mammy's wedding. She would 'turn it hine side befo'' and tie her big blue sash ovah it. Imagine! She'll be heah at the break of day to get it."

"Do you know it is almost that time now?" asked Betty, coming in from the dining-room with seven little heart-shaped boxes. "Here's our cake, and godmother says we'd better take it and go to dreaming on it soon, or the sun will be up before we get started."

"Now remembah," warned Lloyd, as Rob slipped his box into his pocket and began looking around for his hat, "we have all promised to tell our dreams to each othah in the mawning. We'll wait for you, so come ovah early. Come to breakfast."

"Thanks. I'll be on hand all right. I'll probably have to wake the rest of you."

"Don't you do it!" exclaimed Phil. "I'll warn you now, if you're waking, don't call me early, mother, dear. If you do, to-morrow won't be the happiest day of all your glad New Year. I'll promise you that. How about you, Bradford?"

"Oh, I'm thinking of sitting up all night," he answered, laughing, "to escape having any dreams. Miss Mary assures me they will come true, and one might have a nightmare after such a spread as that wedding-supper. I can hardly afford to take such risks."

A moment after, Rob's whistle sounded cheerfully down the avenue and Alec was going around the house, putting out the down-stairs lights. Late as it was, when they reached their room, Joyce stopped to smooth every wrinkle out of her bridesmaid dress, and spread it out carefully in the tray of her trunk.

"It is so beautiful," she said, as she plumped the sleeves into shape with tissue-paper. "As long as an accident had to happen to one of us it was lucky that it was Lloyd's dress that was torn. She has so many she wouldn't wear it often anyhow, and this will be my best evening gown all summer. I expect to get lots of good out of it at the seashore."

"I'm glad it wasn't mine that was torn," responded Mary, following Joyce's example and folding hers away also, with many loving pats. "Probably there'll be a good many times I can wear it here this summer, but there'll never be a chance on the desert, and I shall have outgrown it by next summer, so when I go home I'm going to lay it away in rose-leaves with these darling little satin slippers, because I've had the best time of my life in them. In the morning Betty and I are going to pick all the faded roses to pieces and save the petals. Eugenia wants to fill a rose-jar with part of them. Betty knows how to make that potpourri that Lloyd's Grandmother Amanthis always kept in the rose-jars in the drawing-room. She's copied the receipt for me.

"I'm not a bit sleepy," she continued. "I've had such a beautiful time I could lie awake all the rest of the night thinking about it. Maybe it's because I drank coffee when I'm not used to it that I'm so wide awake, and I ate—oh, how I ate!"

One by one the up-stairs lights went out, and a deep silence fell on the old mansion. The ticking of the great clock on the stairs was the only sound. The serene peace of the starlit night settled over The Locusts like brooding wings. The clock struck one, then two, and the long hand was half-way around its face again before any other sound but the musical chime broke the stillness. Then a succession of strangled moans began to penetrate the consciousness of even the soundest sleeper. Whoever it was that was trying to call for help was evidently terrified, and the terror of the cries sent a cold chill through every one who heard them.

"It's burglars," shrieked Lloyd, sitting up in bed. "Papa Jack! They're in Joyce's room! They're trying to strangle her! Papa Jack!"

Lights glimmered in every room, and doors flew open along the hall. A dishevelled little group in bath-robes and pajamas rushed out, Mr. Sherman with a revolver, Miles Bradford with a heavy Indian club, and Phil with his walking-stick with the electric battery in its head. He flashed it like a search-light up and down the hall.

At the first moan, Joyce had wakened, and realizing that it came from Mary's corner of the room, began to grope on the table beside her bed for matches. Her fingers trembled so she could scarcely muster strength to scratch the match when she found it. Then she glanced across the room and began to laugh hysterically.

"It's all right!" she called. "Nobody's killed! Mary's just having a nightmare!"

By this time Mr. Sherman had opened the door, and the blinding glare of Phil's electric light flashed full in Mary's eyes. At the same instant Lloyd opened the door on the other side, between the two rooms, and Betty and Mrs. Sherman followed her in. So when Mary struggled back to wakefulness far enough to sit up and look around in a dazed way, the room seemed full of people and lights and voices, and she tried to ask what had happened. She was still sobbing and trembling.

"What's the matter, Mary?" called Phil from the hall. "Were the Indians after you again?"

"Oh, it was awfuller than Indians," wailed Mary, in a shrill, excited voice. "It was the worst nightmare I ever had! I can't shake it off. I'm scared yet."

"Tell us about it," said Mrs. Sherman, soothingly. "That's the best remedy, for the terror always evaporates in the telling, and makes one wonder how anything foolish could have seemed frightful."

"I—was being married," wailed Mary, "to a man I couldn't see. And just as soon as it was over he turned from the altar and said, 'Now we'll begin to lead a cat and dog life.' And, oh, it was so awful," she continued, sobbingly, the terror of the dream still holding her, "he—he barked at me! And he showed his teeth, and I had to spit and mew and hump my back whether I wanted to or not." Her voice grew higher and more excited with every sentence. "And I could feel my claws growing longer and longer, and I knew I'd never have fingers again, only just paws with fur on 'em! Ugh! It made me sick to feel the fur growing over me that way. I cried and cried. Now as I tell about it, it begins to sound silly, but it was awful then,—so dark, and me hanging by my claws to the edge of the wood-shed roof, ready to drop off. I thought Phil was in the house, and I tried to call him, but I couldn't remember his name. I got mixed up with the Philip on the shilling, and I kept yelling, Shill! Philling! Shilling! and I couldn't make him understand. He wouldn't come!"

As she picked up the corner of the sheet to wipe her eyes Mrs. Sherman and the girls burst out laughing, and there was an echoing peal of amusement in the hall. The affair would not have seemed half so ridiculous in the daylight, but to be called out of bed at that hour to listen to such a dream, told only as Mary Ware could tell it, impressed the entire family as one of the funniest things that had ever happened. They laughed till the tears came.

"I don't see what ever put such a silly thing into my head," said Mary, finally, beginning to feel mortified as she realized what an excitement she had created for nothing.

"It was Rob's talking about people who live a regular cat and dog life," said Betty. "Don't you remember how long we talked about it to-day down in the clover-patch?"

"You mean yesterday," prompted Phil from the hall, "for it's nearly morning now. And, Mary, I'll tell you why you had it. It's a warning! A solemn warning! It means that you must never, never marry."

"That's what I thought, too," quavered Mary, so seriously that they all laughed again.

"I hope everybody will excuse me for waking them up," called Mary, as they began to disperse to their rooms. "Oh, dear!" she added to Joyce, as she lay back once more on her pillow. "Why is it that I am always doing such mortifying things! I am so ashamed of myself."

The lights went out again, and after a few final giggles from Lloyd and Betty, silence settled once more over the house. But the terror of the nightmare had taken such hold upon Mary that she could not close her eyes.

"Joyce," she whispered, "do you mind if I come over into your bed? I'm nearly paralyzed, I'm so scared again."

Slipping across the floor as soon as Joyce had given a sleepy consent, Mary crept in beside her sister in the narrow bed, and lay so still she scarcely breathed, for fear of disturbing her. Presently she reached out and gently clasped the end of Joyce's long plait of hair. It was comforting to be so near her. But even that failed to convince her entirely that the dream was a thing of imagination. It seemed so real, that several times before she fell asleep she laid her hands against her face to make sure that her fingers had not developed claws, and that no fur had started to grow on them.

The dreams told around the breakfast-table next morning seemed tame in comparison to Mary's recital the night before. Rob had had none at all, which was interpreted to mean that he would live and die an old bachelor. Miles Bradford had a dim recollection of being in an automobile with a girl who seemed to be a sort of a human kaleidoscope, for her face changed as the dream progressed, until she had looked like every woman he ever knew. They could think of no interpretation for that dream. Lloyd's was fully as indefinite.

"I thought I was making a cake," she said, "and there was a big bowl of eggs on the table. But every time I started to break one Mom Beck would say, 'Don't do that, honey. Don't you see it is somebody's haid?' And suah enough, every egg I took up had somebody's face on it, like those painted Eastah eggs; Rob's, and Phil's, and Malcolm's, and Doctah Bradford's, and evah so many I'd nevah seen befoah."

"A very appropriate dream for a Queen of Hearts," said Phil, "and anybody can see it's only a repetition of Mammy Easter's fortune, the 'row of lovahs in the teacup.' Tell us which one you are going to choose."

"It's Joyce's turn," was the only answer Lloyd would make.

"And my dream was positively brilliant," replied Joyce. "I thought we were all at The Beeches, and Allison, and Kitty, and all of us were making Limericks. Kitty began:

"'There was a lieutenant named Logan, Who found one day a small brogan.'

Then she stuck, and couldn't get any farther, and Allison had to be smart and pun on my name. She made up a line:

"'So what will Joyce Ware if she meets a great bear?'

Nobody could get the last rhyme for awhile, but after floundering around a few minutes I had a sudden inspiration and sprang up and struck an attitude as if I were on the stage, and solemnly thundered out:

"'And how can he shoot him with no gun?'

"In my dream it seemed the most thrilling thing—I was the heroine of the hour, and Lieutenant Logan took me aside and told me that the question which I had embodied in that last line was the question of the ages. It had staggered the philosophers and scientists of all times. Nobody could answer that question—'how can he shoot him with no gun,' and he was a better and a happier man, to think that I had rhymed that ringing query with the proud name of Logan. It's the silliest dream I ever had, but you can't imagine how real it seemed at the time. I was so stuck up over his compliments that I began flouncing around with my head held high, like the picture of 'Oh, fie! you haughty Jane.'"

"Oh, Joyce, what a dream to dream on wedding-cake!" exclaimed Mary, with a long indrawn breath. There was no mistaking her interpretation of it. Everybody laughed, and Joyce hastened to explain, "It isn't worth anything, Mary. It'll never come true, for just before I came down-stairs to breakfast I discovered my little box of cake lying on the table under a pile of ribbons. It had been there all night. I had forgotten to put it under my pillow. And," she added, cutting short Mary's exclamation of disappointment, "your box lay beside it. We both were so busy putting away our dresses, and talking over the wedding that we forgot the most important thing of all."

"Well, I'm certainly glad that mine wasn't under my head when I had that dreadful nightmare!" exclaimed Mary, in such a relieved tone that every one laughed again. "I couldn't help taking it as a warning."

"Joyce and I must have changed places in our sleep," said Betty, when her turn came. "She was making verses, and I was trying to draw. But I did my drawing with a thimble. I thought some one said, 'Betty always likes to put her finger in everybody's pie, and now she has a fate thimble to wear on it, she'll mix up things worse than ever.' And I said, 'No, I'll be very conservative, and only make a diagram of the way the animals should go into the ark, and then let them do as they please about following my diagram.' So I began to draw with the thimble on my finger, but instead of animals going into the ark they were people going over Tanglewood stile into the churchyard, and then into the church—a great procession of people in the funniest combinations. There was old Doctor Shelby and the minister's great-aunt, Allison and Lieutenant Stanley, Kitty and Doctor Bradford, Lloyd and Rob, and dozens and dozens besides."

"Lloyd and Rob," echoed the Little Colonel, her face dimpling. "Think of that, Bobby! You nevah in yoah wildest dreams thought of that combination, now did you?"

"No, I never did," confessed Rob, with an amused smile. "Betty has just put it into my head. She is like the old woman who told her children not to put beans in their ears while she was gone. They never would have dreamed of doing such a thing if she hadn't suggested it, but, of course, they wanted to see how it would feel, and immediately proceeded to fill their ears with beans as soon as her back was turned."

"You can profit by their example," laughed Lloyd. "They found that it hurt. It would have been bettah if they had paid no attention to her suggestion."

"Moral," added Rob, "don't do it. Betty, don't you dare put any more dangerous notions in my head."

Phil's turn came next. "My dream is soon told," he said. "I had been sleeping like the dead—a perfectly dreamless sleep—till Mary woke us up with her cat-fight. That aroused me so thoroughly that I didn't go to sleep again for more than an hour. Then when I did drop off at nearly morning, I dreamed that there was a spider on my head, and I gave it a tremendous whack to kill it. It was no dream whack, I can tell you, but a real live double-fisted one, that made me see stars. It actually made a dent in my cranium and got me so wide awake that I couldn't drop off again. I got up and sat by the window till there were faint streaks of light in the sky. I did the rest of my dreaming with my eyes open, so I don't have to tell what it was about."

"I can guess," thought Mary, intercepting the swift glance he stole across the table at something blue. This time it was the ribbon that tied Lloyd's hair, a big bow of turquoise taffeta, knotted becomingly at the back of her neck. Lloyd, unconscious of the glance, had turned to speak to Miles Bradford, to answer his question about Sylvia Gibbs's wedding.