bridesmaids and
flower girls and loving relatives had been rehearsed for days in
advance.

Dick and his Rolls-Royce had assisted at a hymeneal celebration or
two, where a successful rush had been made for the temporary altars of
this beneficent town with the most felicitous results, and he knew the
procedure. When he and Billy organized an afternoon excursion into
Connecticut, they tacitly avoided all mention of the consummation they
hoped to bring about, but they both understood the nature and
significance of the expedition. Dick,--who was used to the easy
accomplishment of his designs and purposes, for most obstacles gave
way before his magnetic onslaught,--had only sketchily outlined his
scheme of proceedings, but he trusted to the magic of that inspiration
that seldom or never failed him. He was the sort of young man that the
last century novelists always referred to as "fortune's favorite," and
his luck so rarely betrayed him that he had almost come to believe it
to be invincible.

His general idea was to get Nancy and Caroline to drive into the
country, through the cool rush of the freer purer air of the suburbs,
give them lunch at some smart road-house, soothingly restful and dim,
where the temperature was artificially lowered, and they could powder
their noses at will; and from thence go on until they were within the
radius of the charmed circle where modern miracles were performed
while the expectant bridegroom waited.

"Nancy, my dear, we are going to be married,"--that he had formulated,
"we're going to be done with all this nonsense of waiting and doubting
the evidence of our own senses and our own hearts. We're going to put
an end to the folly of trying to do without each other,--your folly of
trying to feed all itinerant New York; my folly of standing by and
letting you do it, or any other fool thing that your fancy happens to
dictate. You're mine and I'm yours, and I'm going to take you--take
you to-day and prove it to you." This was to be timed to be delivered
at just about the moment when they drew up in front of the office of
the justice of the peace, who was Dick's friend of old. "Hold up your
head, my dear, and put your hat on straight; we're going into that
building to be made man and wife, and we're not coming out of it until
the deed has been done." In some such fashion, he meant to carry it
through. Many a time in the years gone by he had steered Nancy through
some high-handed escapade that s