osion, I was mistaken. Aubrey bit into his
pipe-stem and sat looking at me for a moment without speaking, a kind,
wistful look which completely undid me, and made me resolved never,
_never_ again to do a single thing without consulting him first. Then
he leaned forward and slowly began to empty and clean his pipe.

"You like her very much?" he said, tentatively.

"I do, indeed!" I exclaimed, enthusiastically. "And she is _so_ fond
of you. She fairly adores you. If you would only _try_ to like her,
Aubrey--she likes you so much--don't smile that way. You don't do her
justice. Indeed you don't. Why, she is the dearest, most confiding,
innocent little thing, just out of college last month--a baby couldn't
have more clinging, dependent ways."

"I'm glad she is coming to visit you, if that's the way you feel about
her," he said.

I drew a sigh of relief. _Some_ husbands would have made such a fuss
that their wives would have felt obliged to cancel the invitation.
Aubrey was different.

"How did you come to invite her?" he asked, presently.

I smiled in pleased anticipation of a good long talk with my husband,
in which I could explain everything.

"Why, you know at the wedding I saw that Artie was very much taken with
her,--and--"

"First, tell me how she came to sit with the family, inside the white
ribbon?"

"Why, she wrote and asked if she couldn't. She said she loved me so
she felt as if she were losing a sister, and that she wanted to sit
with mother and mourn with the family."

Aubrey grinned and I felt foolish.

"And you believed her, you silly little cat!"

"It does sound idiotic to repeat it, but it read as if she meant it," I
said, blushing.

"Never mind, dear," said the Angel. "You are all right."

Now, when Aubrey says I am "all right," it means that I am all wrong,
but that he loves me in spite of it.

"Bee says," I said between laughing and crying, "that I am just like a
stray dog. A pat on the head and a few kind words, and I'd follow
anybody off."

"It would take something more substantial than that to make Bee follow
anybody off," observed Bee's brother-in-law.

"Well, and so she and he were together all that evening, and afterward
they corresponded. But Cary, being my bridesmaid, had, of course, the
first claim on Artie's attention, but he was so taken with Flora that
he sort of neglected Cary. Then, Cary being so spoiled by being rich
and courted and flattered, was pique