persuasive milliner had induced her to give up
her cherished notion and buy a hat instead. "And I'm most sure the
ribbon's cotton-back," she sighed. "I don't know why I bought it,
anyway. That's always the way with me. I think I know what I'll get, and
then they coax me into getting something different. Once I went down
town to buy me a pair of black stockings, and I got an Alice blue silk
waist, instead. Stephen he thinks it's funny and he says he'll see to
the shopping when we're married. I wisht he'd come to-day."

"Wouldn't it be fun if he had?" said Alice. "There is a minister on the
train, and we could have had a lovely wedding out here!"

This romantic idea cheered them both for a time, but its power was
brief. There were signs of a tear-shower imminent, and Alice was at her
wits' end for devices to adjust that garment of praise to fit.

Then came a great inspiration. "Let's walk to the Junction," she
exclaimed. "I'll go with you, and you can get a team there, and drive
home."

"But you'd miss your train."

"O, no, I wouldn't. It has to come right along there behind us, and I
could jump on the cow-catcher if it came; but it can't come without an
engine, and there isn't one in sight, and it's only two miles to your
Junction, you say. That won't be anything of a walk. Go and get your
hat-box."

The hat-box was not all. Though the journey was to be only a short one,
the bride had taken a satchel with her of a type Alice especially
loathed. This was a trifle, however, to a spirit so bent on adventure,
and Alice seized the "grip" and started off at a brisk pace.

"I can't walk so fast," said the bride fretfully. "My shoes hurt."

Alice looked from her own broad-soled street shoes to the high-heeled,
misshapen things on her companion's feet. The latter looked at them,
too, with pride and affection. "I'm going to wear them at the wedding
and I thought that, being they was so tight, I'd best break 'em in a
little first."

"I see," and Alice moderated her own pace to the hobbling gait of the
wedding slippers. Two miles seemed more of an undertaking now and she
began to wonder if she had been rash in her suggestion. "I'll carry it
through," she said to herself. "I know I can, and I won't back down.
We'll get tired if we keep going without rests," she said aloud. "So
let's walk ten minutes and then rest. You can tell by your watch."

The bride brightened at the allusion to the great plated and chased
timepiece s