people and the summer cottagers
don't buy enough--well, you and I can help out. There is that money in
the West, you know."

He nodded emphatically.

"Good!" he cried. "You're right. It will be a chance for us--just a
little chance. And they will never know."

He went away at the end of the week, but he came back for Christmas
and again at Easter and again in the latter part of May. And soon after
that, on a day in early June, he stood, with Sam Keith at his elbow,
in the parlor of the white house by the shore, while Edna Keith played
"Here Comes the Bride" on the piano which had been hired for the
occasion; and, with her hand in Zoeth's arm, and with Captain Shadrach
and Barbara Howe just behind, Mary walked between the two lines of
smiling, teary friends to meet him.

It was a lovely wedding; everyone said so, and as there probably never
was a wedding which was not pronounced lovely by friends and relatives,
we may be doubly certain of the loveliness of this. And there never was
a more beautiful bride. All brides are beautiful, more or less, but this
one was more. Isaiah, who had been favored with a peep at the rehearsal
on the previous evening, was found later on by Shadrach in the kitchen
in a state of ecstatic incoherence.

"I swan to godfreys!" cried Isaiah. "Ain't--ain't she an angel, though!
Did you ever see anything prettier'n she is in them clothes and with
that--that moskeeter net on her head? An angel--yes, sir-ee! one of them
cherrybins out of the Bible, that's what she is. And to think it's our
Mary-'Gusta! Say, Cap'n Shad, will checkered pants be all right to wear
with my blue coat tomorrow? I burnt a hole in my lavender ones tryin' to
press the wrinkles out of 'em. And I went down to the wharf in 'em last
Sunday and they smell consider'ble of fish, besides."

The wedding company was small, but select. Judge Baxter and his wife
were there and the Keiths--Mrs. Keith condescended to ornament the
occasion; some of the "best people" had seen fit to make much of Mary
Lathrop and Mrs. Keith never permitted herself to be very far behind the
best people in anything--and Mrs. Wyeth was there, and Miss Pease, and
Mr. Green who had received an invitation and had come from Boston, and
Doctor Harley, and Simeon Crocker and his "steady company," one of the
tea-room young ladies, and Annabel and--and--well, a dozen or fifteen
more.

When the minister asked, "Who giveth this woman to this man?" Zoeth
answered,