that grew almost
into hysterics when she saw some of the incongruous furnishings, are all
past describing. Margaret was too happy to think. She rushed from one
room to another. She hugged her mother and linked her arm in her
father's for a walk across the long piazza; she talked to Emily and Dick
and Jane; and then rushed out to find Gardley and thank him again. And
all this time she could not understand how Gardley had done it, for she
had not yet comprehended his fortune.

Gardley had asked his sisters to come to the wedding, not much expecting
they would accept, but they had telegraphed at the last minute they
would be there. They arrived an hour or so before the ceremony; gushed
over Margaret; told Gardley she was a "sweet thing"; said the house was
"dandy for a house party if one had plenty of servants, but they should
think it would be dull in winter"; gave Margaret a diamond sunburst pin,
a string of pearls, and an emerald bracelet set in diamond chips; and
departed immediately after the ceremony. They had thought they were the
chief guests, but the relief that overspread the faces of those guests
who were best beloved by both bride and groom was at once visible on
their departure. Jasper Kemp drew a long breath and declared to Long
Bill that he was glad the air was growing pure again. Then all those old
friends from the bunk-house filed in to the great tables heavily loaded
with good things, the abundant gift of the neighborhood, and sat down to
the wedding supper, heartily glad that the "city lady and her gals"--as
Mom Wallis called them in a suppressed whisper--had chosen not to stay
over a train.

The wedding had been in the school-house, embowered in foliage and all
the flowers the land afforded, decorated by the loving hands of
Margaret's pupils, old and young. She was attended by the entire school
marching double file before her, strewing flowers in her way. The
missionary's wife played the wedding-march, and the missionary assisted
the bride's father with the ceremony. Margaret's dress was a simple
white muslin, with a little real lace and embroidery handed down from
former generations, the whole called into being by Margaret's mother.
Even Gardley's sisters had said it was "perfectly dear." The whole
neighborhood was at the wedding.

And when the bountiful wedding-supper was eaten the entire company of
favored guests stood about the new piano and sang "Blest Be the Tie that
Binds"--with Margaret play