u unhappy--but I must go. I must! I'll--I'll be
happy--and good now--if _you'll_ only be happy. Good-bye!" And as she
called back at me over her shoulder, Martha ran from me down through the
hedge and into the door of the chapel, which always, night and day, rain
and storm, stood slightly ajar. A queer pain smote me to see that she
had run from me into the only place in all the broad, smiling Harpeth
Valley where I could not--or would not, follow her. And the sanctuary
that she sought was for every man, woman or child who wanted it--only I
could not and would not seek it.

"'The covert of wings,'" I whispered to myself, as I went down the
street to Mrs. Sproul's as rapidly as possible to be rid of my own
company. As I repeated the words that the parson had used to Mr.
Jeffries I noticed one great white cloud with a dark center flash fire
into another, to a great crashing and rumbling. "I wonder if it is
really going to storm," I speculated gloomily, as I turned into the
Sproul gate, but the brilliant sunshine seemed to fling me a dazzling
denial from every petal of the white clematis that wreathed itself
across the front porch, under which Mrs. Sproul, arrayed in all the
midday magnificence of good form, sat and waited for her guests. Mrs.
Cockrell sat beside her and they were delighted to see me and demanded
happiness from me which it was hard for me to give from the depths that
had been stirred by my strange interview with Martha, to which I felt I
ought to have a key, but could not find it anywhere.

CHAPTER XVII

THE PAGEANT

"We were just saying, Charlotte dear, that this absurd school affair has
completely overshadowed your wedding day," said Mrs. Cockrell, as she
rocked back and forth in tune with her Irish point rose she was
constructing. "It seems to me a wedding ought to come before a school
festivity."

"Social law requires that marriage take precedence of schooling," said
Mrs. Sproul, as her mischievous old eyes snapped at Mrs. Cockrell's
placid conventionality. "The correct order is for women to take husbands
and then school children should be the inevitable outcome. They are not,
however, in this day and generation, which is about to be the last, I'm
thinking."

"There will be thirty-nine kiddies from the Settlement and eleven from
the Town to feast on reason and flow soul together in the new school," I
laughed, as I sat down between them. "Also I'm thinking that a lot more
will be forthcom