ed solicitously
about her.

"How dear you all are to me." She held out her arms as though to clasp
her friends in one loving embrace. "I am so glad now that I am going to
have a real church wedding. I thought at first it would be nicer to be
quietly married and slip away without fuss and feathers, but now I know
that it is my sacred duty to my friends and to David to play my new
part, as I've always played my other parts, in public."

"I always knew that Anne and David would be married some day," declared
Grace wisely. "I believe David fell in love with Anne the very first
time he saw her. Don't you remember Anne, we met him outside the high
school, and he asked us to come to his aeroplane exhibition?"

"I remember it as well as though it happened yesterday," Anne's musical
voice vibrated with a tenderness called forth by the memory of that
girlhood meeting with the man of men.

"Those days seem very far away to me now," remarked Miriam Nesbit. "I
feel as though I'd been grown up for ages."

"I don't feel a bit grown up. It seems only yesterday since I ran races
and tore about our garden with Captain, our good old collie," laughed
Grace. "I'm like Peter Pan. I don't want to, and can't, grow up. And I
shall never marry." She glanced about her circle of friends with an
almost challenging air. She looked so radiantly young and pretty in her
dainty frock that simultaneously the thought occurred to them all, "Poor
Tom." Yet in their hearts, even to Mrs. Gray, they could find no fault
with Grace's straightforward words. If she were almost cruelly
indifferent to Tom as a lover, she had the virtue at least of being
absolutely honest. Even Mrs. Gray admired and respected her candor.

"Did you ever see anything more beautiful than Anne's and Miriam's
bouquets?" broke in Miss Southard, with the intent of leading away from
a not wholly happy subject.

Miriam held her bouquet at arm's length and eyed it with admiration. It
was composed of pale yellow orchids and lilies of the valley, while
Anne's was a shower of orange blossoms and the same delicate lilies.

"If you are determined never to marry, Grace, you won't try to catch
Anne's bouquet," smiled Mrs. Gray.

"Oh, yes, I shall," nodded Grace. "I must do it because it's hers. I
always try to catch the bouquets at weddings. It's good sport. So far,
however, I've never secured one."

"I shall throw this one directly at you," promised Anne.

"Anne, child, the carriages ar