edding Laura liked was a thing that made his blood run cold. There
seemed to be no end whatever to the young bride's blithe demands. The
trousseau part of it he didn't mind. To the gowns and hats and gloves and
shoes and trunks and jaunty travelling bags which came pouring into the
house, he made no objection. All that, he considered, was fair play. But
what got on Roger's nerves was this frantic fuss and change! The faded hall
carpet had to come up, his favorite lounge was whisked away, the piano was
re-tuned while he was trying to take a nap, rugs were beaten, crates and
barrels filled the halls, and one whole bedroom stripped and bare was
transformed into a shop where the wedding presents were displayed. In the
shuffle his box of cigars disappeared. In short, there was the devil to
pay!

And Deborah, was as bad as the bride. At times it appeared to Roger as
though her fingers fairly itched to jab and tug at his poor old house,
which wore an air of mute reproach. She revealed a part of her nature that
he viewed with dark amazement. Every hour she could spare from school, she
was changing something or other at home--with an eager glitter in her eyes.
Doing it all for Laura, she said. Fiddlesticks and rubbish! She did it
because she liked it!

In gloomy wrath one afternoon he went up to see Edith and quiet down. She
was well on the way to recovery, but instead of receiving solace here he
only found fresh troubles. For sitting up in her old-fashioned bed, with an
old-fashioned cap of lace upon her shapely little head, Edith made her
father feel she had washed her hands of the whole affair.

"I'm sorry," she said in an injured tone, "that Laura doesn't care enough
about her oldest sister to put off the wedding two or three weeks so I
could be there. It seems rather undignified, I think, for a girl to hurry
her wedding so. I should have loved to make it the dear simple kind of
wedding which mother would have wanted. But so long as she doesn't care for
that--and in fact has only found ten minutes--once--to run in and see the
baby--"

In dismay her father found himself defending the very daughter of whom he
had come to complain. It was not such a short engagement, he said, he had
learned they had been engaged some time before they told him.

"Do you approve of that?" she rejoined. "When I was engaged, I made Bruce
go to you before I even let him--" here Edith broke off primly. "Of course
that was some time ago. An engage