ra. She goes a great deal in Mrs. Langdon's
box, and Mrs. Langdon and I are together on the board of managers of the
Magdalene Home, and also on the board of the Hospital for Unfortunate
Gentlefolk." And so on, and on.

I walked up and down among those wrapped-up, ghostly chairs and tables and
cabinets and statues many times before Joe arrived with the minister--and
he was a Methodist, McCabe by name. You should have seen Mrs. Ball's look
as he advanced his portly form and round face with its shaven upper lip
into the drawing-room. She tried to be cordial, but she couldn't--her mind
was on Anita, and the horror that would fill her when she discovered that
she was to be married by a preacher of a sect unknown to fashionable
circles.

"All I ask of you," said I to him, "is that you cut it as short as
possible. Miss Ellersly is tired and nervous." This while we were shaking
hands after Joe's introduction.

"You can count on me, sir," said McCabe, giving my hand an extra shake
before dropping it. "I've no doubt, from what my young neighbor here
tells me, that your marriage is already made in your hearts and with all
solemnity. The form is an incident--important, but only an incident."

I liked that, and I liked his unaffected way of saying it. His voice had
more of the homely, homelike, rural twang in it than I had heard in New
York in many a day. I mentally doubled the fee I had intended to give him.
And now Alva and she were coming down the stairway. I was amazed at sight
of her. Her evening dress had given place to a pretty blue street suit
with a short skirt--white showing at her wrists, at her neck and through
slashings in the coat over her bosom; and on her head was a hat to match. I
looked at her feet--the slippers had been replaced by boots. "And they're
just right for her," said Alva, who was following my glance, "though I'm
not so tall as she."

But what amazed me most, and delighted me, was that she seemed to be almost
in good spirits. It was evident she had formed with Joe's daughter one of
those sudden friendships so great and so vivid that they rarely lived long
after the passing of the heat of the emergency that bred them. Mrs. Ball
saw it, also, and was straightway giddied into a sort of ecstasy. You can
imagine the visions it conjured. I've no doubt she talked house on the
east side of the park to Joe that very night, before she let him sleep.
However, Anita's face was serious enough when we took our pl