een the two
families.

"We will be all cousins by marriage now," Piney said, "and if you girls
don't let me be a bridesmaid, too, I'll never pass your portals again."

CHAPTER XXX

FACING REALITY

The wedding was set for the twentieth of September, and the last of the
tent colony departed two weeks previously. The boys had gone first of all,
and then the art students. The night before they left there had been a
moonlight lawn party up at Greenacres, with dancing in a pavilion of young
willows built by the boys. Kit declared she had never imagined anything so
easy and so striking. With a good floor laid for dancing, they had erected
a framework and then tied the willow trees to this on the four sides of
the pavilion. Crisscrossing overhead were rows of Japanese lanterns. Old
Cady Graves paced up and down playing his violin, as usual, and calling
off for the quadrille, in his high pitched rhythmic cadence.

But the biggest surprise of all came when Bryan Ormond, who had stirred
the musical circles of two worlds, took his place on the little country
platform and played for them on his 'cello. The Judge and Mrs. Ellis
enjoyed it just as the Robbinses did. It was a novel treat to hear the
strains of Lizst and Chopin sounding in the purple silences of those old
country hills, but when he had finished, Cynthy leaned over to Kit, who
sat next to her and who was in an uplifted rhapsody of meditation.

"Do you suppose he'd be willing to play 'Home, Sweet Home' on that thing
if we asked him to? 'Tain't nothin' but a big fiddle, is it?"

Before Kit could answer, Madame Ormond herself stood facing them on the
veranda steps under the big yellow porch light, and instead of any
grand-opera aria, her golden voice floated out for them, singing Cynthy's
favorite as surely it had never been sung before in Gilead.

After it was all over and the girls were in their own rooms, Kit stepped
to Helen's door for an extra match, and found her standing before the
mirror, a long green velvet portiere draped around her shoulders, and a
strip of gold braid banding her hair. She turned around with quick
embarrassment, and exclaimed breathlessly:

"Oh, Kit, please don't tell. I was just trying to look like Isolde. Madame
Ormond has a photograph of herself dressed like this, and I was wondering
if I ever would sing it."

Kit wrapped her arms around her as she stood behind her, almost as if she
would have protected her from any dizzy fl