"Oh, Polly-Ann, Polly-Ann," she said tensely, to the small cat on the
cushions, "if I should ever wake up and find that it wasn't true--"

Polly-Ann stared at her with mystical green orbs. She could offer no
help, but she served as a peg upon which Jean could hang her eloquence.
She stretched herself luxuriously and purred.

"But it is true, Polly-Ann," Jean said, "and I am going to church with
him--wasn't it beautiful that he should think of going to church with
me on Thanksgiving morning, Polly-Ann?"

She dressed herself presently, making a sort of sacred rite of
it--because of Derry. She was glad that she was pretty--because of
Derry. Glad that her gray fur coat was becoming--glad of the red rose
against it.

He came in his car, but they decided to walk.

"I always walk to church," said Jean.

"There's sleet falling," said Derry.

"I don't care," said Jean.

"Nor I," said Derry.

And so they started out together!

It was a dismal day, but they did not know it. They knelt together in
the old church. They prayed together. And when at last the
benediction had been said and they stood together for a moment alone in
the pew, Derry looked down at her and said, "Beloved," and the morning
stars sang--!

When they went out, the sleet was coming thick and fast, and Derry's
car was waiting. And when they were safe inside, he turned to her and
his voice exulted, "I haven't even told you that I love you--I haven't
asked you to marry me--I haven't done any of the conventional
things--it hasn't needed words, and that's the wonder of it."

"Yes."

"But you knew."

"Yes."

"From the first?"

"I think it was from the first--"

"In the Toy Shop?"

"Yes."

"And you thought I was poor--and I thought you were just the girl in
the shop?"

"Isn't it wonderful?"

It was more wonderful than they knew.

"Do you know that my money has always been more important to some
people than I have been? I have thought they cared for me because of
it."

"Ralph said last night that I cared--for the money."

She would not tell him of the other things that Ralph had said. And
even as she thought of him, across the path of her rapture fell the
shadow of Ralph's scorn of Derry.

He bent down to her. "Jean, if I had been that shabby boy that you
first saw in the shop would you have been happy with me, in a plain
little house? Would you?"

Up the streets came the people from the churches--the crowds of people
who