. She goes a great
deal in Mrs. Langdon's box, and Mrs. Langdon and I are together on the
board of managers of the Magdalene Home, and also on the board of the
Hospital for Unfortunate Gentlefolk." And so on, and on.

I walked up and down among those wrapped-up, ghostly chairs and tables
and cabinets and statues many times before Joe arrived with the
minister--and he was a Methodist, McCabe by name. You should have seen
Mrs. Ball's look as he advanced his portly form and round face with
its shaven upper lip into the drawing room. She tried to be cordial,
but she couldn't--her mind was on Anita, and the horror which would
fill her when she discovered that she was to be married by a preacher
of a sect unknown to fashionable circles.

"All I ask of you," said I, "is that you cut it as short as possible.
Miss Ellersly is tired and nervous." This while we were shaking hands
after Joe's introduction.

"You can count on me, sir," said McCabe, giving my hand an extra shake
before dropping it. "I've no doubt, from what my young neighbor here
tells me, that your marriage is already made in your hearts and with
all solemnity. The form is an incident--important, but only an
incident."

I liked that, and I liked his unaffected way of saying it. His voice
had more of the homely, homelike, rural twang in it than I had heard
in New York in many a day. I mentally added fifty dollars to the fee I
had intended to give him. And now Anita and Alva were coming down the
stairway. I was amazed at sight of her. Her evening dress had given
place to a pretty blue street suit with a short skirt--white showing
at her wrists, at her neck and through slashings in the coat over her
bosom; and on her head was a hat to match. I looked at her feet--the
slippers had been replaced by boots. "And they're just right for her,"
said Alva, who was following my glance, "though I'm not so tall as
she."

But what amazed me most, and delighted me, was that Anita seemed to be
almost in good spirits. It was evident she had formed with Joe's
daughter one of those sudden friendships so great and so vivid that
they rarely live long after the passing of the heat of the emergency
which bred them. Mrs. Ball saw it, also, and was straightway giddied
into a sort of ecstasy. You can imagine the visions it conjured. I've
no doubt she talked house on the east side of the park to Joe that
very night, before she let him sleep. However, Anita's face was
serious enough when