calls you. I'll preach a
short sermon to-night," with a benignant chuckle.

He had his will. Some feeling that it would please Mrs. Sloman best,
the only person besides ourselves whom it concerned us to please,
settled it in Bessie's mind, although she anxiously inquired several
times before the doctor left if I felt equal to going to church.
Suppose I should faint on the way?

I was equal to it, for I took a long nap on the sofa in Mrs.
Splinter's parlor through the soft spring twilight, while Bessie held
what seemed to me interminable conferences with Mary Jane.

It was not a brilliant ceremony so far as the groom was concerned. As
we stood at the chancel-rail I am afraid that the congregation,
largely augmented, by this time, by late-comers--for the doctor had
spread the news through the village far and wide--thought me but a
very pale and quiet bridegroom.

But the bride's beauty made amends for all. Just the same soft white
dress of the afternoon--or was it one like it?--with no ornaments, no
bridal veil. I have always pitied men who have to plight their troth
to a moving mass of lace and tulle, weighed down with orange-blossoms
massive as lead. This was my own little wife as she would walk by my
side through life, dressed as she might be the next day and always.

But the next day it was the tartan cloak that she wore, by special
request, as we climbed the hill to the Ledge. It was spring
indeed--bluebirds in the air, and all the sky shone clear and warm.

"Let _me_ begin," said my wife as she took her old seat under the
sheltering pine. "You can't have anything to say, Charlie, in
comparison with me."

There was a short preliminary pause, and then she began.

CHAPTER XII.

"Well, after you wouldn't take me to Europe, you know--"

"You naughty girl!"

"No interruptions, sir. After you _couldn't_ take me to Europe I felt
very much hurt and wounded, and ready to catch at any straw of
suspicion. I ran away from you that night and left you in the parlor,
hoping that you would call me back, and yet longing to hide myself
from you too. You understand?"

"Yes, let us not dwell on that."

"Well, I believe I never thought once of Fanny Meyrick's going to
Europe too until she joined us on the road that day--you remember?--at
the washerwoman's gate."

"Yes; and do _you_ remember how Fidget and I barked at her with all
our hearts?"

"I was piqued then at the air of ownership Fanny seemed to assume i