ed.

Knowing that he could reach her almost as quickly as a letter, and
confident that a personal interview would be a thousandfold more
effective, Phil did not write. But he took the first train to
Louisville, and after a few days with Mr. Sherman left for Riverville,
armed with an argument and a promise which he was sure would carry
weight in his behalf. The argument was that he needed her. He was about
to take charge of an important business entrusted to him, and he could
not do it half so well without the inspiration of the little home she
had agreed to help him make. The promise was that marrying him should
not interfere with what she considered her tryst. She should have his
hearty help and cooeperation in trying to do for any state which they
might move to, what Mrs. Blythe was doing for hers.

All this and much more he said in the first impetuous words of meeting,
and almost before Mary had recovered from the overwhelming surprise of
seeing him, the ring was back on her finger and she was listening to the
plans which he rapidly outlined to her. He wasn't going to give her a
chance to change her mind again, he insisted. There was no reason why
they should not be married right there in the library the following day,
as soon as he could make the necessary arrangements.

"Oh, but there is a reason," gasped Mary, aghast at the sudden demand.
Then she hesitated, loath to tell what it was. For though it was a
weighty one with her, she knew that he would smile at it as childish.
But, after all, it was easier to confess to Phil than any one else. He
seemed to understand perfectly what she meant, even when the words
halted and failed to express her innermost feelings.

So, presently, she found herself explaining to him that it had always
been one of her beliefs from the time of her earliest knowledge of such
things, that one couldn't properly be a bride without a certain ceremony
of preparation. The filling of a dower chest was one part of it, and the
setting of infinite stitches, each as perfect as a tiny pearl, in much
"fair and broidered raiment" was another. The princesses in the fairy
tales did their fine needlework to the accompaniment of songs upon a
lute; so one set stitches in one's wedding garments, to the romance of
fancies--and so--

She did not finish coherently, but Phil laughed and said teasingly that
he ought to have known that any one, who, as a child, wept to wear her
rosebud sash out walking on the