lar day, I mightn't be engaged to you now instead of to Tony."

Unluckily Lucile heard that and froze rigid for a moment with horror.
Then recovering her motor faculties, she moved in a stately manner
toward the door.

"I think if you will excuse me," she said, "I'll go up and prepare for
luncheon."

Mary gazed conscience-stricken from her to Wallace who was blushing like
a boy caught stealing apples. "I'm sorry," she gasped, but not quickly
enough for the apology to overtake her aunt. "It's terrible of me to say
things like that and I do, every now and then. Can you bear with me until
I've had time to quiet down? It's all so new, to be happy like this, I'm
a little--wild with it."

In his nice neutral unexaggerated way he told her that her happiness
could never be anything but a joy to him; and after that, when they were
seated side by side upon the cane davenport he asked about her plans;
when they were going to be married, where they meant to live, and so on.

"Why, we'll be married, I suppose," she said, "at the end of the
customary six weeks' engagement. There isn't a thing to wait for,
really."

"I'm glad of that," he remarked.

Anybody but Mary would have taken that at its face value; he was glad
that they would have to wait no longer. But he flinched as she glanced
round toward him and at that she laughed and patted his hand
reassuringly.

"We're doing everything correctly," she told him; "beginning with
father's announcement of the engagement in the papers, Tuesday. We
remain on exhibition during the conventional six weeks and then we're
married at noon over in the Fourth Church. Impeccable! That's going to
be our middle name."

Mary used so very little slang that she was able to produce quite
extraordinary effects with it when she did.

"I'm glad," Wallace said, a little ruffled by the start she had given
him, "that you have not been persuaded to do anything--differently."

"Who do you suppose it was," she asked, "who insisted, in an adamantine
manner, that it be done like that? It wasn't me and it wasn't Aunt
Lucile. It was Anthony March." She added, after a reflective silence, "He
was right about it, of course, because when that's over it's done with.
And then--what he hasn't thought of, and I wouldn't have, most likely
until it was too late--he'll have a friendlier audience next Tuesday
night than if he'd given me my way and made a trip to the City Hall with
me last Monday. I wanted to burn my