that Ruth
idealized him far beyond his worth--he could read it in her gaze, which
was all but reverential. He said to himself, as he turned away, that a
man never had so many motives to be true to the girl he was to marry. To
bring the first shade of distrust into this little sister's tender eyes
would be punishment enough for any disloyalty, no matter what the cause
might be.

The wedding was to be at six o'clock. There was nothing about the whole
affair, as it had been planned by Roberta, with his full assent, to make
it resemble any event of the sort in which he had ever taken part. Not
one consideration of custom or of vogue had had weight with her, if it
differed from her carefully wrought-out views of what should be. Her
ruling idea had been to make it all as simple and sincere as possible,
to invite no guests outside her large family and his small one except
such personal friends as were peculiarly dear to both. When Richard had
been asked to submit his list of these, he had been taken aback to find
how pitifully few people he could put upon it. Half a dozen college
classmates, a small number of fellow clubmen--these painstakingly
considered from more than one standpoint--the Cartwrights, his cousins,
whom he really knew but indifferently well; two score easily covered the
number of those whom by any stretch of the imagination he could call
friends. The long roll of his fashionable acquaintance he dismissed as
out of the question. If he had been married in church there would have
been several hundreds of these who must unquestionably have been bidden;
but since Roberta wanted as she put it, "only those who truly care for
us," he could but choose those who seemed to come somewhere near that
ideal. To be quite honest, he was aware that his real friends were among
those who could not be bidden to his marriage. The crippled children in
the hospitals; the suffering poor who would send him their blessing when
they read in to-morrow's paper that he was married; the shop-people in
Eastman who knew him for the kindest employer they had ever had:--these
were they who "truly cared"; and the knowledge was warm at his heart, as
with a ruthless hand he scored off names of the mighty in the world of
society and finance.

"Dick, my boy, you've grown--you've grown!" was his grandfather's
comment, when Richard, with a rueful laugh, had shown the old man the
finished list, upon which, well toward the top, had been the names of
Mr