nothing might disturb its perfect order.

"I think we are really going to be able to avoid that last wild rush
which usually accompanies home weddings," said Mrs. Sherman, as they sat
leisurely talking over the dessert. "Usually the bridesmaids' gloves are
missing, or the bride's slippers have been packed into one of the trunks
and sent on ahead to the depot. But this time I have tried to have
everything so perfectly arranged that the wedding will come to pass as
quietly and naturally as a flower opens. I want to have everything give
the impression of having _bloomed_ into place."

"Eliot and Mom Beck are certainly doing their part to make such an
impression," said Eugenia. "Eliot has already counted over every
article I am to wear, a dozen times, and they're all laid out in
readiness, even to the 'something blue.'"

"Oh, that reminds me!" began Lloyd, then stopped abruptly. Nobody
noticed the exclamation, however, but Mary, and, with swift intuition,
she guessed what the something blue had suggested to the maid of honor.
It was that bit of turquoise that caused the only scramble in the
preparations, for Lloyd could not remember where she had put it.

"I was suah I dropped it into one of the boxes in my top bureau drawer,"
she said to herself on the way up-stairs. Then, with her finger on her
lip, she stopped on the threshold of the sewing-room to consider. She
remembered that when she gave up her room to the guests, all the boxes
had been taken out of that drawer. Some of them had been put in the
sewing-room closet, and some carried to a room at the end of the back
hall, where trunks and hampers were stored.

Now, while Betty was down-stairs, helping with a few last details, Lloyd
took advantage of her absence to search all the boxes in the closet and
drawers of the sewing-room, but the missing turquoise was not in any of
them.

"I know I ought to be taking a beauty sleep," she thought, "so I'll be
all fresh and fine for the evening, but I must find it, for I promised
Phil I'd wear it."

In the general shifting of furniture to accommodate so many guests,
several articles had found their way back among the trunks. Among them
was an old rocking-chair. It was drawn up to the window now, and, as
Lloyd pushed open the door, to her surprise she found Mary Ware
half-hidden in its roomy depths. She was tilted back in it with a book
in her hands.

Mary was as surprised as Lloyd. She had been so absorbed in the story
t