n.

"You don't feel like a bride, eh?" was Lanse's reply to Charlotte's
statement. "Well, I shouldn't think you would--an infant like you. You
look more suitable for a christening than for a marriage ceremony.
Father's likely, when Doctor Elder asks who gives the bride away, to
murmur, 'Charlotte Wendell,' thinking he's inquiring the child's name."

Charlotte threw him a glance, half-shy, half-merry. "As best man you
should be saying complimentary things about your friend's choice."

"I am. The trouble is you're not old enough to enjoy being mistaken for
a babe in arms."

"I don't think she looks like a child. I think she's the stunningest
young woman I ever saw!" declared Just, with enthusiasm. "If her hair
was done up on top of her head she'd be a regular queen."

Celia laughed. Her own beautiful blond locks were piled high, and the
style became her. But Charlotte's dusky braids were prettier low on the
white neck, in the girlish fashion in which they had long been worn, and
Celia announced this fact with a loving touch on the graceful _coiffure_
her own hands had arranged for her sister.

"You can't improve her," she said. "She looks like our Charlotte, and
that's just the way we want her to look. That's what Andy wants, too."

"Of course he does. And I can tell you, he looks like Andy," Lanse
asserted. "Did you know he'd been making calls all the morning, the same
as usual? Made 'em till the last minute, too. It isn't fifteen minutes
since I saw his machine roll in. Hope he wasn't rattled when he wrote
his prescriptions."

It was the Birches' custom to make as little as possible of family
crises. Talk and laugh as lightly as they would, however, every one of
them was watching Charlotte with anxiety, for it was the first break in
the dear circle, and it seemed almost as if they could have better
spared any other.

Yet Charlotte was going to live no farther away than next door--this was
the comfort of the situation.

"Well, I must be off to look after my duties to the groom," Lanse
announced presently, with a precautionary glance into his mother's
mirror to make sure that not a hair of his splendour was disturbed. "I
ought to have been with him before this, only my infatuation for the
bride makes my case difficult. You've heard of these fellows who hang
about another chap's girl till the last minute, doing the forsaken act.
I feel something like that. Good luck, little girl. Keep cool, and trust
Andy and D