deck the jolliest
of jolly little tars.

When autumn came, Ben Barry took rooms in the city, coming to Keefe for
the week-ends. Geraldine, who had had the usual school-girl fragments of
music and languages, studied hard, and Mrs. Barry took her to town for
one month instead of the three which she usually spent there. It was
best not to divert Ben too much.

So the winter wore away, and the snow melted and the crocuses peeped up
again. The robins returned, and Ben understood at last why their
insistent, joyous cry was always of _Geraldine, Geraldine, Geraldine_!

The orchard was under solicitous surveillance this spring, and though it
takes the watched pot so long to boil, at last the rosy clouds drifting
in the sky seemed to catch in the apple boughs and rest there, and then
the wedding day was set.

The spacious rooms of the old house were cleared for dancing, for the
ceremony was to take place out under the trees at noon. Miss Upton had a
new black silk dress given her by the bridegroom with a note over which
she wept, for it acknowledged so affectionately all that he owed to his
bride's good fairy from the day when she so effectively waved her
umbrella wand in the city. One of her gowns was made over for Mrs.
Whipp, who on the great day stood with the maids and watched the wedding
party as it filed out over the lawn to the rosy bower of the orchard.
The six bridesmaids wore pale-green and white, and, as Miss Upton viewed
with satisfaction, "droopy hats." She scanned the half-dozen of Ben's
men friends who supported him on the occasion and mentally noted their
inferiority to her hero.

Geraldine--but who could describe Geraldine in her beautiful happiness
and her happy beauty! Look over your fairy tales and find a princess in
clinging, lacy robes, her veil fastened with apple blossoms, and the
golden sheen of her hair shining through. Her bouquet of
lilies-of-the-valley showered down before her and clung to her filmy
gown as she stepped, and the sweet gravity of her eyes never left the
face of the good old minister who had baptized Ben in his babyhood,
until he came to the words: "Who giveth this woman to be married to this
man?" Mrs. Barry stepped forward, took the hands of her children and
placed them together. Mehitable Upton was not the only one in the large
gathering who dissolved at the look on those three faces.

In a minute it was over. The two were made one, and a soft, happy
confusion of tongues ensu