bathed the bloodshot eyes.
For in their heart of hearts, every one of the parsonage girls held
this wedding to be the affair of prime importance, national and
international, as well as just plain Methodist.

The twins were undeniably lazy, and slept as late of mornings as the
parsonage law allowed. So it was that when Lark skipped into the
dining-room, three minutes late for breakfast, she found the whole
family, with the exception of Carol, well in the midst of their meal.

"She was sick," she began quickly, then interrupting herself,--"Oh, good
morning! Beg pardon for forgetting my manners. But Carol was sick,
Prudence, and I hope you and Fairy are ashamed of yourselves--and
auntie, too--for making fun of her. She couldn't sleep all night, and
rolled and tossed, and her head hurt and she talked in her sleep, and--"

"I thought she didn't sleep."

"Well, she didn't sleep much, but when she did she mumbled and said
things and--"

Then the dining-room door opened again, and Carol--her hair about her
shoulders, her feet bare, enveloped in a soft and clinging kimono of
faded blue--stalked majestically into the room. There was woe in her
eyes, and her voice was tragic.

"It is gone," she said. "It is gone!"

Her appearance was uncanny to say the least, and the family gazed at her
with some concern, despite the fact that Carol's vagaries were so common
as usually to elicit small respect.

"Gone!" she cried, striking her palms together. "Gone!"

"If you do anything to spoil that wedding, papa'll whip you, if you are
fifteen years old," said Fairy.

Lark sprang to her sister's side. "What's gone, Carrie?" she pleaded
with sympathy, almost with tears. "What's gone? Are you out of your
head?"

"No! Out of my complexion," was the dramatic answer.

Even Lark fell back, for the moment, stunned. "Y-your complexion," she
faltered.

"Look! Look at me, Lark. Don't you see? My complexion is gone--my
beautiful complexion that I loved. Look at me! Oh, I would gladly have
sacrificed a leg, or an arm, a--rib or an eye, but not my dear
complexion!"

Sure enough, now that they looked carefully, they could indeed perceive
that the usual soft creaminess of Carol's skin was prickled and sparred
with ugly red splotches. Her eyes were watery, shot with blood. For a
time they gazed in silence, then they burst into laughter.

"Pie!" cried Fairy. "It's raspberry pie, coming out, Carol!"

The corners of Carol's lips twitched slig