ch of St. Giles was the largest as well as the most
fashionable of Devondale's houses of God, but it had its limitations. It
could not hold the entire population of the town and surrounding
counties. The chosen minority, having presented cards of admission at
the entrance, accepted with sedate satisfaction the comfortable seats
assigned to it. The uninvited but cheerful majority lingered out in the
frosty street, forming a crowd that increasingly blocked the avenue and
the church entrance, besides wrecking the nervous systems of traffic
men.

It was an interested, good-humored, and highly observant crowd, pressing
forward as each automobile approached, to watch with unashamed curiosity
the guests who alighted and made their way along the strip of carpet
stretching from curbstone to church. Devondale's leading citizens were
here, and the spectators knew them all, from those high personages who
were presidents of local banks down to little Jimmy Harrigan, who was
Barbara Devon's favorite caddie at the Country Club.

Unlike most of his fellow guests, Jimmy arrived on foot; but the crowd
saw his unostentatious advent and greeted him with envious badinage.

"Hi, dere, Chimmie, where's yer evenin' soot?" one acquaintance desired
to know. And a second remarked solicitously, "De c'rect ting, Chimmie,
is t' hold yer hat to yer heart as y' goes in!"

Jimmy made no reply to these pleasantries. The occasion was too big and
too novel for that. He merely grinned, presented his card of admission
in a paw washed clean only in spots, and accepted with equal equanimity
the piercing gaze of the usher and the rear seat to which that outraged
youth austerely conducted him.

There, round-eyed, Jimmy stared about him. He had never been inside of
St. Giles's before. It was quite possible that he would never find
himself inside of it again. He took in the beauty of the great church;
its blaze of lights; its masses of flowers; its whispering, waiting
throng; the broad white ribbon that set apart certain front pews for the
bride's special friends, including a party from New York. Jimmy knew all
about those friends and all about this wedding. His grimy little ears
were ceaselessly open to the talk of the town, and for weeks past the
town had talked of nothing but the Devons and Barbara Devon's
approaching wedding. Even now the townspeople were still talking of the
Devons, during the brief interval before the bridal party appeared.

In the pe