r a day or so, will be
all that is required. I will call to-morrow if you would prefer it."

"We will send you a note, doctor, to-morrow morning: he seems so much
stronger already that perhaps it will not be necessary to make you
take such a long drive."

"Yes, yes, I'm very busy. You send me word whether to come or not."

And bustlingly the good doctor departed, with Mrs. Splinter
majestically descending to hold whispered conference with him at the
gate.

"Charlie, I _will_ send for Dr. Wilder if you are ready, for I'm never
going to leave you another minute as long as we live."

"I think," said I, laughing, "that I should like to stand up first on
my feet; that is, if I have any feet."

What a wonderful prop and support was Bessie! How skillfully she
helped me to step once, twice, across the floor! and when I sank down,
very tired, in the comfortable easy-chair by the window, she knelt on
the floor beside me and bathed my forehead with fragrant cologne, that
certainly did not come from Mrs. Splinter's tall bottle of lavender
compound on the bureau.

"Oh, my dear boy, I have _so_ much to say! Where shall I begin?"

"At the end," I said quietly. "Send for Dr. Wilder."

"But don't you want to hear what a naughty girl--"

"No, I want to hear nothing but 'I, Elizabeth, take thee--'"

"But I've been so very jealous, so suspicious and angry. _Don't_ you
want to hear how bad I am?"

"No," I said, closing the discussion after an old fashion of
the Sloman cottage, "not until we two walk together to the Ledge
to-morrow, my little wife and I."

"Where's a card--your card, Charlie? It would be more proper-like, as
Mrs. Splinter would say, for you to write it."

"I will try," I said, taking out a card-case from my breast-pocket.
As I drew it forth my hand touched a package, Fanny Meyrick's packet.
Shall I give it to her now? I hesitated. No, we'll be married first in
the calm faith that each has in the other to-day, needing no outward
assurance or written word.

I penciled feebly, with a very shaky hand, my request that the doctor
would call at Hiram Splinter's, at his earliest convenience that
evening, to perform the ceremony of marriage between his young friend,
Bessie Stewart, and the subscriber. Hiram's eldest son, a youth
of eight, was swinging on the gate under our window. To him Bessie
entrusted the card, with many injunctions to give it into no other
hands than the doctor's own.

In less time than we ha