u--and I've loved you
ever since I met you. I went away because I could not stay here and
see you married to another man. I've stayed away for the same reason.
Esme, is it too late? Did you ever care anything for me?"

"Yes, I did," she said slowly.

"Do you care still?" he asked.

She hid her face against his shoulder. "Yes," she whispered.

"Then we'll go back to the house and be married," he said joyfully.

Esme broke away and stared at him. "Married!"

"Yes, married. We've wasted ten years and we're not going to waste
another minute. We're _not_, I say."

"Selwyn! It's impossible."

"I have expurgated that word from my dictionary. It's the very
simplest thing when you look at it in an unprejudiced way. Here is a
ready-made wedding and decorations and assembled guests, a minister on
the spot and a state where no licence is required. You have a very
pretty new dress on and you love me. I have a plain gold ring on my
little finger that will fit you. Aren't all the conditions fulfilled?
Where is the sense of waiting and having another family upheaval in a
few weeks' time?"

"I understand why you have made such a success of the law," said Esme,
"but--"

"There are no buts. Come with me, Esme. I'm going to hunt up your
mother and mine and talk to them."

Half an hour later an astonishing whisper went circulating among the
guests. Before they could grasp its significance Tom St. Clair and
Jen's husband, broadly smiling, were hustling scattered folk into the
parlour again and making clear a passage in the hall. The minister
came in with his blue book, and then Selwyn Grant and Esme Graham
walked in hand in hand.

When the second ceremony was over, Mr. Grant shook his son's hand
vigorously. "There's no need to wish you happiness, son; you've got
it. And you've made one fuss and bother do for both weddings, that's
what I call genius. And"--this in a careful whisper, while Esme was
temporarily obliterated in Mrs. Grant's capacious embrace--"she's got
the right sort of a nose. But your mother is a grand woman, son, a
grand woman."

At the Bay Shore Farm

The Newburys were agog with excitement over the Governor's picnic. As
they talked it over on the verandah at sunset, they felt that life
could not be worth living to those unfortunate people who had not been
invited to it. Not that there were many of the latter in Claymont, for
it was the Governor's native village, and the Claymonters were getting
up