warm, round little
cheeks, and gave him crumbs of sponge cake. Rose and Harry left at ten
o'clock for their country home, leaving the precious baby for his
grandmother and aunt to bring back the next day, but the other three sat
talking and planning until almost midnight, and Kate could feast her
eyes to her heart's content upon the picture of Wolf in his father's old
leather chair, with Norma perched on the wide arm, one of her own arms
about her husband's neck and their fingers locked together.

It was settled that they were to find a little house in East Orange,
near Rose, and furnish it from top to bottom, and go to housekeeping
immediately. Meanwhile, Norma must see the Melroses, and get her wedding
announcements engraved, and order some new calling cards, and do a
thousand things. She and Wolf must spend their evenings writing
notes--and presents would be arriving----!

She made infinitesimal lists, and put them into her shopping bag, or
stuck them in her mirror, but Wolf laughed at them all. And instead of
disposing of them, they developed a demoralizing habit of wandering out
into Broadway, in their old fashion, after dinner, looking into shop
windows, drifting into little theatres, talking to beggars and taxi-cab
men and policemen and strangers generally, mingling with the bubbling
young life of the city that overflowed the sidewalks, and surged in and
out of candy and drug stores, and sat talking on park benches deep into
the soft young summer nights.

Sometimes they went down to the shrill and crowded streets of the lower
east side, and philosophized youthfully over what they saw there; and,
as the nights grew heavier and warmer, they often took the car, and
skimmed out into the heavenly green open spaces of the park, or, on
Saturday afternoon, packed their supper, and carried it fifty miles away
to the woods or the shore.

CHAPTER XXV

Before she had been married ten days Norma dutifully went to call upon
old Mrs. Melrose, being fortunate enough to find Leslie there. The old
lady came toward Norma with her soft old wavering footsteps, and gave
the girl a warm kiss even with her initial rebuke:

"Well, I don't know whether I am speaking to this bad runaway or not!"
she quavered, releasing Norma from her bejewelled and lace-draped
embrace, and shaking her fluffed and scanty gray hair.

"Oh, yes, you are, Aunt Marianna," the girl said, confidently, with her
happy laugh. Leslie, coming more slowl