bout her, Mark led her down to the sleigh,
and taking his seat beside her, drove back to the farmhouse, where the
supper waited for her. Katy, to whom Mark first communicated his desire,
warmly espoused his cause, and that went far toward reassuring Helen,
who, for some time past had been learning to look up to Katy as to an
older sister, so sober, so earnest, so womanly had Katy grown since
Wilford went away.

"It is so sudden, and people will talk," Helen said, knowing while she
said it how little she cared for people and smiling at Katy's reply:

"They may as well talk about you a while as me. It is not so bad when
once you are used to it."

After Katy, Aunt Betsy was Mark's best advocate. It is true this was not
just what she had expected when Helen was married. The "infair" which
Wilford had declined was still in Aunt Betsy's mind; but that, she
reflected might be yet. If Mark went back on the next train there could
be no proper wedding party until his return, when the loaves of frosted
cake, and the baked fowls she had seen in imagination should be there in
real, tangible form, and as she expressed it they would have a "high."
Accordingly she threw herself into the scale beginning to balance in
favor of Mark, and when at last old Whitey stood at the door ready to
take the family to the church, Helen sat upon the lounge listening half
bewildered, while Katy assured her that she could play the voluntary,
even if she had not looked at it, that she could lead the children
without the organ, and in short do everything Helen was expected to do
except go to the altar with Mark.

"That I leave for you," and she playfully kissed Helen's forehead, as
she tripped from the room, looking back when she reached the door, and
charging the lovers not to forget to come, in their absorption of each
other.

St. John's was crowded that night, just as churches always are on such
occasions, the children occupying the front seats, with looks of
expectancy upon their faces, as they studied the heavily laden tree, the
boys wondering if that ball, or whistle, or wheelbarrow was for them,
and the girls appropriating the tastefully dressed dolls, showing so
conspicuously among the dark-green foliage. The Barlows were rather
late, for upon Uncle Ephraim devolved the duty of seeing to the license,
and as he had no seat in that house, his arrival was only known by Aunt
Betsy's elbowing her way to the front, and near to the Christmas tree
w