s.

I'm afraid every one at home will think me quite mad to be married
here instead of in my dear old house, but Sally, after all, my
wedding belongs to this world, not to that. I shall be married here
at Mrs. Hills' in her big old double parlors, the ugliness conquered
with flowers, and I shall wear my traveling things--as the village
paper would say--"the bride, attired in a modish going-away gown"--I
know you'll wail for all the trimmings, Sally dear,--the veil and the
train and all the rest, but that sort of thing belongs to eighteen,
not twenty-eight. I'm beyond the age of opera bouffe weddings,--I
don't vision myself coming down a white-ribboned aisle with wobbly
knees, covered with orange blossoms and gooseflesh! But--oh, Sally,
the truth is that I would be married in a mackintosh or a bathing
suit, I'm so dizzily, dazedly happy!

Dolores Tristeza, good as an angel out of a frieze, agrees to stay
docilely with Emma Ellis at Hope House while we are away. She calls
her "_Ella de la barba_" with reference to the small but determined
little fringe on poor E.E.'s chin and I tremble--no, I don't! I'm
not afraid of anything now. Everything is and will be perfect.

If only you can come, best of friends!

Happily,

JANE.

_The Day!_

MY DEAREST SALLY,

"I must be making haste,
I have no time to waste--
This is--this is my wedding morning!"

But my haste is done. I am radiantly ready now, and there are seven
still and shining hours ahead.

My trunk is packed with jolly Island clothes; my bag stands ready to
close; my sitting room is running over with gifts, little and large,
proud and pitiful,--from Marty Wetherby's opulent clock and Rodney
Harrison's gorgeous silver service to "Angerleek's" preserves and the
hand-painted mustard pot from Ethel and Jerry and Billiken, and a
virtuously ugly dusting cap from Mrs. Mussel. If only you were here,
Sally dearest! But I know your mother needs you, and it must be a
blessed thing to have a mother to need you!

Sally, I'm feeling very proud and very humble, very----

_Later._

Just as I wrote that, Michael Daragh came, white, tight-lipped, more
than ever like the Botticelli St. Michael; he was the
"Captain-General of the Hosts of Heaven." All he needed was a sword.

"Woman, dear," he