o you want to put anything else in this trunk before I lock it, Lucy?"

"Could you find room for my blue flannel bath robe? I'll want it on top
where I can get it out without unpacking, and, oh, mother, won't you
please put my alcohol stove and curling irons in my travelling bag?"

She was prettily excited, and during the last few days she had shown an
almost child-like confidence in her mother's opinions about the trivial
matters of packing.

"Mother, I don't want to come down yet--my hair isn't dry. Will you send
supper up to me? I'll dress about nine o'clock when Bertie and the girls
are coming."

"Of course I will, darling. I'll go straight downstairs and fix your
tray. Is there anything you can think of that you would like?"

At this Jenny broke into a laugh: "Why, anybody would think she was
dying instead of being married!"

"Just a cup of coffee. I really couldn't swallow a morsel," replied
Lucy, whose single manifestation of sentiment had been a complete loss
of appetite. "You needn't laugh, Jenny. Wait until you are going to be
married, and see if you are able to eat anything."

Putting the tray back into the trunk, Virginia closed it almost
caressingly. For twenty-four hours, as Lucy's wedding began to draw
nearer, she had been haunted by the feeling that she was losing her
favourite child, and though her reason told her that this was not
true--that Lucy was, in fact, less fond of her than either of the
others, and far less dear to her heart than Harry--still she was unable
wholly to banish the impression. It seemed only yesterday that she had
sat waiting, month after month, week after week, day after day, for her
to be born. Only yesterday that she had held her, a baby, in her arms,
and now she was packing the clothes which that baby would carry away
when she went off with her husband! Something of the hushed expectancy
of those long months of approaching motherhood enveloped her again with
the thought of Lucy's wedding to-morrow. After all, Lucy was her first
child--neither of the others had been awaited with quite the same
brooding ecstasy, with quite the same radiant dreams. To neither of the
others had she given herself at the hour of birth with such an
abandonment of her soul and body. And she had been a good child--all day
with a lump in her throat Virginia had assured herself again and again
that no child could have been better. A hundred little charming ways, a
hundred bright delicious tricks o