neck, while everybody else "oh'd" and "ah'd" about the parlor
door. For wasn't it furnished with three of the most beautiful easy
chairs, a tiny lounge, two spidery-legged tables, with gilded
chains--and--oh!--a piano! A shiny, beautiful upright piano, with a blue
velvet stool.

"I didn't do it all, Olive did half," cried Mr. Congreve the first
chance he had of making himself heard above the babel of admiration and
gratitude; whereupon Olive put in a hasty denial. She hadn't done a
thing but come over and arrange. Everything was from Uncle Ridley except
the silver vase and bracket, between the windows.

"Well, you've seen it now, that'll do. I was invited here to breakfast,
and I'd like to have it," cried the old gentleman, in a testy voice,
which the good-natured gleam in his sharp eyes denied. So everybody
pranced into the dining-room, and Bea was placed behind the coffee-urn,
and couldn't do a thing but blush, and look too happy and overcome to
attend to her duties.

Perfect silence fell, as the young husband lifted his hand, and in a
voice that trembled slightly, asked the minister to request a blessing
on this, the first meal in the new home. But when that was done,
everybody broke into a babel of fun again, and a merrier meal was never
witnessed anywhere.

"I shall come over and call on you this afternoon, Mrs. Barnett," was
Kat's good-bye, when good-bye moment came.

"Everything is lovely; may you live long, and always be thus gay," said
Kittie, who began to feel a queer sensation in her throat, and wanted to
get off in a hurry.

"I don't know what to say, except that I want you to be so happy, Bea
dear," Ernestine said, giving a good-bye kiss lingeringly.

"Well, I think weddings are splendid, though I wish you wasn't going to
have a new home, Bea," remarked Jean with regret, as she tied on her
hat, and shook hands with her new brother.

"I shall miss you dreadfully, and our room will seem so lonely," was
Olive's next remark. "But you must not let us be apart much."

"I will not," said Bea with full heart and eyes. "I will never love you
any less, and we will all be just the same, except that you'll have a
brother, and you know you've always wanted one."

"I hope you'll be happy, dear child, I do indeed," said Mr. Congreve,
with an exhaustive hand shake. "But married life is full of swampy
places, and you must both be careful. I've only one piece of advice, and
that is, whatever you do, don't let you