roke the heap and
embraced Ruth.

"Well, honey-girlie," said Mrs. Morris, as she and Isabel reentered
their cottage, "wasn't it sweet of them all, that 'laying on of hands,'
as Arthur called it?"

"Yes," replied the Southern girl, starting up the cramped old New
England stairway to her room. "It was child's play, but it was very
sweet of them, and especially of the General."

The mother detained her fondly. "And still, my child, you're not
satisfied?"

"Ah, mother, are you blind, stone blind, or do you only hope I am?"

"My dearie!"

"Why, mother, excepting Leonard, we haven't had one word of true consent
from one of them."

"Oh, now, Isabel! They'll all be glad enough by and by."

"Yes," said the daughter, from the landing above, "I've no doubt of
that."

She passed into her room, closed the door, and standing in the middle of
the floor, with her temples in her palms, said, "O merciful God! Oh,
Leonard Byington, if only that second hand of yours had hung back!"

V

SKY AND POOL

Arthur and Isabel were married in their own little church of All Angels,
at the far end of the old street.

"I cal'late," said a rustic member of his vestry, "th' never was as
pretty a weddin' so simple, nor as simple a weddin' so pretty!"

Because he said it to Leonard Byington he ended with a manly laugh, for
by the anxious glance of his spectacled daughter he knew he had slipped
somewhere in his English. But when he heard Leonard and Ruth, in
greeting the bride's mother, jointly repeat the sentiment as their own,
he was, for a moment, nearly as happy as Mrs. Morris.

"Such a pity Godfrey had to be away!" said Mrs. Morris. It was the only
pity she chose to emphasize.

Godfrey was on distant seas. The north-bound mid-afternoon express bore
away the bridal pair for a week's absence.

"Too short," said a friend or so whom Leonard fell in with as he came
from the railway station, and Leonard admitted that Arthur was badly in
need of rest.

At sunset Ruth came out of her gate and stood to welcome her brother's
tardy return. Both brightly smiled; neither spoke.

When he gave her a letter with a foreign stamp her face lighted
gratefully, but still without words she put it under her belt. Then they
joined hands, and he asked, "Where's father?"

"Inside on the lounge," she replied. Her lips fell into their faraway
smile, to which she added this time a murmur as of reverie, and Leonard
said almost as musingly, "Come,