rls were invited to the shower, and Mona arrived first of all.
She came bustling in enveloped in furs, which she unfastened and threw
off as she talked.

"Everything's going fine!" she announced. "I've attended to the very
smallest details myself, so there'll be no mistakes. There always are
mistakes and oversights at a wedding and mine is going to be the great
exception. My, but I'm tired! I've been chasing about since early
this morning. Spent hours with the floral artist, and had a long
interview with the caterer. But I confab with him every day. I've
changed the menu four times already."

"You're a goose, Mona," observed Patty, smiling at her enthusiastic
friend, "what do you care what people eat at your wedding, as long as
it's good and proper?"

"My dear child, I only expect to get married once in my checkered
career, and so I want everything connected with the occasion to be
perfect. I don't want to look back and regret that I didn't have as
much of a symphony in the supper as I did in the orchestra. You don't
know the responsibility of a girl who has to get married and look after
the wedding both. You'll have Mrs. Nan to run the arrangements, but I
haven't anybody but little Mona."

The bride-elect looked so radiant and capable and generally happy, that
Patty knew better than to waste any sympathy on her.

"You love it all, Mona," she said, "you're just in your element
ordering decorations and deciding menus; and I suppose you've
superintended the hat-check people and the elevator service."

"Of course I have. I practically run the whole hotel just at present.
The management have to take a back seat where anything connected with
the fifteenth is concerned."

"It doesn't seem like a wedding at all," laughed Patty. "It is more
like a pageant."

"It's a wedding, all right. You'll realise it when you see me go off
with Roger. Oh, Patty, don't think I don't realise and appreciate the
importance and solemnity of the marriage tie, but I do want the
appointments to be perfect and beautiful just _because_ it is my
wedding to Roger. We're very much in love, you know----"

"I do know it, Mona, and it's all beautiful, and I'm glad you're having
everything just as you want it. You're an old dear, and nobody wishes
you more happiness than I do."

"Don't talk in that strain, or I'll weep on your shoulder. I'm all
keyed up, you know--honest, Patty, it's pretty awful to have no mother
or aunt or any