understudy" was passed with stifled giggles from one to another down
both benches.

Ca'line Allison came next, in a white dress and the white slippers that
had been thrown after Eugenia's carriage with the rice.

She was flower girl, and carried an elaborate fancy basket filled with
field daisies. A wreath of the same snowy blossoms crowned her woolly
pate, and an expression of anxiety drew her little black face into a
distressed pucker. She had been told that at every third step she must
throw a handful of daisies in the path of the on-coming bride, and her
effort to keep count and at the same time keep her balance on the high
French heels was almost too much for her.

During her many rehearsals M'haley had counted her steps for her: "One,
two, three--_throw_! One, two, three--_throw_!" She had gone through her
part every time without mistake, for her feet were untrammelled then,
and her flat yellow soles struck the ground in safety and with rhythmic
precision. She could give her entire mind to the graceful scattering of
her posies. But now she walked as if she were mounted on stilts, and her
way led over thin ice. The knowledge that she must keep her own count
was disconcerting, for she could not "count in her haid," as M'haley had
ordered her to do. She was obliged to whisper the numbers loud enough
for herself to hear. So with her forehead drawn into an anxious pucker,
and her lips moving, she started down the aisle whispering, "One, two,
three--_throw_! One, two, three--_throw_!" Each time, as she reached the
word "throw" and grasped a handful of daisies to suit the action to the
word, she tilted forward on the high French heels and almost came to a
full stop in her effort to regain her balance.

But Ca'line Allison was a plucky little body, accustomed to walking the
tops of fences and cooning out on the limbs of high trees, so she
reached the altar without mishap. Then with a loud sigh of relief she
settled her crown of daisies and rolled her big eyes around to watch the
majestic approach of her mother.

No matron of the four hundred could have swept down the aisle with a
grander air than Sylvia. The handsome lavender satin skirt she wore had
once trailed its way through one of the most elegant receptions ever
given in New York, and afterward had graced several Louisville
functions. Its owner had given Sylvia the bodice also, but no amount of
stretching could make it meet around Sylvia's ample figure, so the