-And--and so--we could
comfort each other." The voice failed utterly here, and Jacqueline ran
blindly out of the room, up to the never-failing solace of Mag's baby;
leaving Jemima with the miserable sensation of having been cruel where
she meant to be kind, and cruel to no purpose.

That night, when Philip came at his usual time, Jacqueline settled the
matter once for all. She perched upon the arm of his chair, holding his
head against her shoulder so that he could not look at her.

"Reverend Flip, dear," she began, "I want you to tell me
something--truly, truly, truth now! Before it is too late. People
shouldn't marry each other unless they're going to be quite honest with
each other, should they?"

"No, dear," he answered. "Fire away."

"You're sure, quite sure, that you really want to marry me?" She
abandoned her strangle-hold, and leaned down with her cheek on his hair,
to make the telling of anything disagreeable more easy for him.

She felt him start, but he said, "Very sure, sweetheart."

"And you're not just being noble," she asked, wistfully, "like Jemmy
thinks?"

Philip cried, "Jemima be darned!" and pulled her down into his arms
quite roughly.

Her relief and gratitude pierced through the armor of his abstraction.

"Oh, Phil, you _are_ sweet!" she whispered, holding him tight. "And I'll
make up to you somehow for it. I will! I will!"

The wedding was more Jemima's idea of what such an affair should be than
her own had been; with a bishop officiating, and a choir in surplices
(rather weak-voiced and tearful, without their beloved leader) and a
matron-of-honor in a very smart New York frock, and the little church
crowded to its doors, and even spilling into the road beyond. Nor was
the congregation entirely composed of country-folk, tenants and the
like. There was quite a sprinkling of what Jemima called "worth-while
people"; not only Jacqueline's victims, who came _en masse_ and looking
rather depressed, but Mrs. Lawton and her daughters and several other
women whom Jemima had firmly brought to Storm (one could not be friends
with young Mrs. Thorpe without being friends with her family as well)
and who needed no urging to come a second time.

Well toward the front there sat another guest, whom the eye of the
matron-of-honor encountered with some distaste; an unwashed-looking
person with a peddler's pack on the floor at his feet, whose beaming,
innocent gaze missed no detail of the ceremony. Brothe