res related to the Church, lifted on one hand to what--from the
velvet square of the little yard--seemed the very sky. Directly across
from the office building was the Rectory; and two windows of the
drawing-room, as well as two upper windows (the window of a guest-room
and the window of "the study") opened upon it.

One face of the Church, ivy-grown and beautified with glowing eyes of
stained-glass, looked across the stretch of green to a high brick wall
which shut off the sights and sounds of the somewhat narrow and fairly
quiet street. It was over this wall that the peach trees waved their
branches, and in the late summer dropped a portion of their fruit. And
it was in this wall that there opened a certain door to the Close which
was never locked--a little door, painted a gleaming white, through
which the Orphanage babies came, to be laid in the great soft-quilted
basket that stood on a stone block beneath a low gable-roof of stone.

On this perfect spring morning, the Close was transformed, for the
swinging-couch and the lawn marquee were gone, and a great wedding-bell
of hoary blossoms was in its place, hung above the wide flagstone which
lay before this side entrance to the Church. Flanking the bell on
either hand, flowers and greenery had been massed by the decorators to
achieve an altar-like effect. And above the bell, roofing the
improvised altar, was a canopy of smilax, as Gothic in design as the
vari-tinted windows to right and left.

Discussing the unwonted appearance of their haunt and home, the
bird-dwellers of the Close flew about in some excitement, or alighted
on wall and ledge to look and scold. And fully as noisy as the
sparrows, and laboring like Brownies to set the yard to rights
following the departure of the florist and his assistant, a trio of
boys from the choir raked and clipped and garnered into a sack.

Ikey was in command, and wielded the lawn mower. Henry, a tall
mild-eyed lad, selected for the morning's pleasant duty in the Close in
order to reward him for irreproachable conduct during the week
previous, snipped at the uneven blades about the base of the sun-dial.
The third worker was Peter, a pale boy, chosen because an hour in the
open air would be of more value to him than an hour at his books.

"I tell you she iss _not_ a Gentile!" denied Ikey, who was arrogant
over being armed with authority as well as lawn mower.

"She is so!" protested Henry, with more than his usual war