busy with chisel and hammer
at the slender, flat box which lay upon the hall floor, in the centre of
an interested group. He paused to glance up at his sister, where she had
stopped upon the landing. "You act as if you didn't want to see what's
in it," he remonstrated, whacking away vigorously.

"Indeed I do," Charlotte declared, coming on down the staircase, smiling
at the faces upturned toward her, which were smiling back, every one.
"But I'm beginning to feel as if I--as if they--as if--"

"It must seem odd to feel like that," John Lansing agreed, quizzically.
Lanse had but just arrived, having come on especially for the wedding,
from the law-school at which he had been for two years.

Celia slipped her arm about her younger sister's shoulders. "I know what
she means," she said, in her gentle way. "It's so unexpected to her,
after sending out no invitations at all, that gifts should keep pouring
in like this. But it's not unexpected to us."

"Oh, I know how many of them come from father's and mother's friends,
and how many from Andy's grateful patients. It's all the more
overwhelming on that account."

"Look out there, Just!" The admonition came from Jeff, and consequently
was delivered from some six feet in the air, where that
nineteen-year-old's head was now carried. "Don't split those pieces;
they'll be fine for the Emerson boys building."

"That's so." Just wielded his tools with more care. Presently he had the
long parcel lying on the floor. At this moment Mr. Roderick Birch opened
the outer hall door.

"As usual," was his smiling comment, as he laid aside hat and overcoat
and joined the circle. "Charlotte's latest?"

Charlotte herself undid the wrappings, wondering what the gift could be.
She disclosed a long piece of dingy-looking metal.

"A new shingle for Andy!" cried Jeff.

Just turned the heavy slab over, and it proved to be of copper. Words
came into view, hammered and beaten into the glinting metal. An
effective conventionalised border surrounded the whole.

"'Ye Ornaments of a House are ye Guests who Frequent it,'" read the
assembled company, in chorus.

"Oh, isn't that beautiful!" cried Charlotte.

Jeff glanced at her suspiciously. "She says that about everything," he
remarked. "Don't think much of it myself. The sentiment may be awfully
true--or otherwise; but what's the thing for? If anybody wanted to hint
at an invitation to visit Andy and Charlotte, he might have done it
without pu