as your dear papa calls it, and at twenty-six you are to become the bride of a wonderful man--neither too early nor too late an age. I cannot really grieve--when I realize how happy you are going to be, and yet----"

"Don't work so hard, aunty," Bea said, easily. "Of course Steve's a wonderful old dear and all that--I wish I had asked him for the moon.

I do believe he'd have gotten an option on it." She laughed and reached over to a bonbon dish to rummage for a favourite flavour. She selected a fat, deadly looking affair, only to bite into it and discover her mistake. She tossed it on the floor so that Monster could creep out of her silk-lined basket and devour the remains.

"If you call natural feelings of a mother and an aunt 'working hard' I am at a loss----" her aunt began with attempted indignation.

"Oh, I don't call anything anything; I'm dead and almost buried." She looked at her small self in the pier gla.s.s. "Think of all I have to go through with before it is over and we are on our way west. Here it is half-past twelve and I've not eaten breakfast really. I'm so tired of presents and bored with clothes that I cannot acknowledge another thing or decide anything. I think weddings are a frightful ordeal. Did you know the women on my war-relief committee presented me with a silver jewel box? Lovely of them, wasn't it? But I deserve it--after slaving all last winter. My bronchitis was just because I sold tags for them during that rainy weather."

"No, I haven't seen it. But I am glad you decided on a church wedding--there is such a difference between a wedding and just a marriage."

Beatrice shoved the box of lingerie away. "Those are all wrong, so back they go; and I can't help it if that woman does need money, I told her I wanted a full inch-and-a-half beading and she has put this crochet edge all round everywhere. I shan't accept a single piece!"

Whereupon she sat down at her dressing table and rang for her maid.

Madame Pompadour herself had no lovelier boudoir than Beatrice. It was replete with rose-coloured taffeta curtains, padded sky-blue silk walls with garlands of appliqued flowers. Lace frills covered every possible object; the ivory furniture was emphasized by smart rose upholstery, and the dressing table itself fairly dazzled one by the array of gold-topped bottles and gold-backed brushes.

Johanna, the maid, began brushing the sunshiny hair, the Gorgeous Girl stamping her feet as snarls a.s.serted themselves.

"Two more days before the wedding," she complained. "There's the Twill luncheon to-day and a bridge and tea at Marion Kavanaugh's--I hate her, too. She gave me the most atrocious Chinese idol. I'm going to tell her I have no proper place for it, that it deserves to be alone in a room in order to have it properly appreciated." She laughed at herself. "So I'll leave it for papa. The apartment won't hold but just so much--it's a tiny affair." She laughed again, the apartment having only eleven rooms and a profusion of iron grille work at all the windows. "But it's a wonderful way to start--in an apartment--it is such a good excuse for not dragging in all the terrible wedding presents. I can leave everything I like with papa because he never minds anything as long as he has old slippers and plenty of mince pie.

After a year or so I'm going to have a wonderful house copied after one I saw in Italy. By then they will all have forgotten what they gave me and I can furnish it so we won't have to go about wearing blinders.... The blue dress, Jody, that's right."

"And what is it to-night?" her aunt asked, meekly.

"The Farmsworth dinner; and to-morrow another luncheon and the garden party at the club. Then the dinner here, rehearsal; and Wednesday, thank heaven, it will be all ended!"

Johanna helped fasten the king's-blue satin with seed-pearl tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and place a trig black hat atilt on the yellow hair.

"The ermine scarf, please."

The Gorgeous Girl was slipping matronly looking rings on her fingers and adding an extra dab of powder. She took another chocolate, hugged Monster, gave orders about sending back the lingerie, remarked that she must send her photograph to the society editor for the next day's edition, and she thought the one taken in her Red Cross outfit would be the sweetest; and then kissing the tip of her aunt's right ear she sailed downstairs and into the closed car to be whirled to Alice Twill's house, a duplicate of the Gorgeous Girl's. There she was enthusiastically embraced and there followed a mutual admiration as to gowns, make-ups, and jewellery, and a mutual sympathy as to being desperately tired and busy.

"My dear, I haven't had time to breath--it's perfectly awful! I'll have to drop out of things next winter. Steve will never allow me to be so overburdened. I can't sleep unless I take a powder and I can't have any enthusiasm in the morning unless I have oodles of black coffee. Of course one has had to do serious work--thank heavens the war is over!--but you can't give up all the good times.... What a lovely centre piece! And those cunning little gilt suitcases for favours! A really truly gold veil pin in each one? You love! Oh, let's have a c.o.c.ktail before any one comes in. It does pick me up wonderfully.... Thanks.... Yes, I had breakfast in bed--some coffee and gluten crackers was all, and aunty had to stay in my room half the morning trying to be pensive about my wedding! No, Markham didn't make my travelling suit half as well as he did Peggy Brewster's. I shall never go near him again.... And did you hear that Jill found her diamond pendant in her cold cream jar, so it wasn't a burglar at all!

"Yes, g.a.y.l.o.r.d Vondeplosshe is going to be an usher.... Well, what else could I do at the last moment? Wasn't it absurd for a grown man like Fred Jennings to go have the mumps? Gay knows everyone and I'm sure he is quite harmless.... Oh, Steve is well and terribly busy, you know.

He is giving me the most wonderful present. Papa hasn't given me his yet and I'm dying to know what it is, he always gives me such wonderful things, too.... There's the bell. I do hope it isn't Lois Taylor, because she always wants people to sign pet.i.tions and appear in court. It is Lois Taylor! Why didn't you leave word to have all pet.i.tions checked with wraps?" Giggles. "Good heavens, what a fright of a hat. Well, are you ready to go down?"

Five hours later Beatrice was being dressed for the evening's frolic, dipping into the bonbon box for a stray maple cream, and complaining of her headache. At this juncture her father tiptoed clumsily into her room and laid a white velvet jewel case on her dressing table, standing back to watch her open it.

"You dear----" she began in stereotyped, high-pitched tones as she pressed the spring. "You duck!" she added a trifle more enthusiastically, viewing the bowknot of gems in the form of a pin--a design of diamonds four inches wide with a centre stone of pigeon's-blood ruby. "You couldn't have pleased me more"--trying it against her dressing gown. "See, Jody, isn't this wonderful? I must kiss you." She rustled over to her father and brushed her lips across his cheek, rustling back again to tell Jody that she must try the neck coil again--it was entirely too loose.

"I guess Steve can't go any better than that," her father said, balancing himself on his toes and, in so doing, rumpling the rug.

He was a tall, heavily built man with harsh features and gray hair, the numerous signs of a self-made man who is satisfied with his own achievements. He had often told his sister: "Bea can be the lady of the family. I'm willing to set back and pay for it. It'd never do for me to start buying antiques or quoting poetry. I can wear a dress suit without disgracing Bea, and make an after-dinner speech if they let me talk about the stockyards. But when it comes to musicals and monocles I ask to be counted out. I had to work too hard the first half of my life to be able to play the last half of it. I wasn't born in cold storage and baptized with cracked ice the way these rich men's sons are. I've shown this city that a farmer's boy can own the best in the layout and have his girl be the most gorgeous of the crew--barring none!

"This is a joy," Beatrice was saying, rapidly, her small face wrinkled with displeasure.

She wished her father would go away because she wanted to think of a hundred details of the next forty-eight hours and her nerves were giving warning that their limit of endurance was near at hand. This big, awkward man who was so harsh a task-master to the world and so abject a slave to her own useless little self annoyed her. He offended in an even deeper sense--he did not interest her. Things which did not interest her were met with grave displeasure. Religion did not interest her; neither did Steve O'Valley's business--her head ached whenever he ventured to explain it. She never had to listen to anything to which she did not wish to listen; the only rule imposed upon her was that of becoming the most gorgeous girl in Hanover, and this rule she had obeyed.

"Tired?" he asked, timidly.

"Dead. It's terrible, papa. I don't know how I'll stay bucked up. I want to burst out crying every time a bell rings or any one speaks to me.... Oh, Jody, your fingers are all thumbs! Please try it again."

"It looks nice," her father ventured, indicating the puff of gold hair.

Beatrice did not answer; she sighed and had Johanna proceed.

"The Harkin detectives will watch the presents," her father ventured again. "There are some more packages downstairs."

"I'm tired of presents; I want to be through unwrapping crystal vases and gold-lined fruit dishes and silly book ends and having to write notes of thanks when I hate the gifts. My mind seems quivering little wires that won't let me have a moment's rest." She took another piece of candy.

"When I married your mother," her father remarked, softly, evidently forgetting Johanna's presence, "we walked to a minister's house in Gardenville about five miles south of here. Your mother was working for a farmer's wife and she didn't say she was going to be married.

She was afraid they might try talking her out of it--you know how women do." He looked round the elegant little room. "I was getting ten dollars a week--that seemed big money in those days. I rented two rooms in the rear cottage of a house on Ontario Street--it's torn down now. And I bought some second-hand stuff to furnish it."

He paced up and down; he had a habit of so doing since he was always whisked about in his motor car and he feared growing stiff if he did not exercise.

"But your mother liked the rooms--and the things. I remember I bought a combination chair and stepladder for a dollar and it didn't work."

He gave a chuckle. "It stayed in a sort of betwixt and between position, about one third stepladder and about two thirds chair, and that worried me a lot. A dollar meant a good deal then. But your mother knew what to do with it, she used it for kindling wood and said we'd charge it up to experience. Yes, sir, we walked to the minister's--she wore a blue-print dress with a little pink sprig in it, and a sort of a bonnet." His hand made an awkward descriptive gesture.

"The minister was mighty nice--he took us into his garden and let your mother pick a bunch of roses, and then he hitched up his horse and buggy and drove us back to the farmer's house. The farmer's wife cried a little when we told her; she liked your mother. She gave us a crock of b.u.t.ter and some jam. While your mother packed her little trunk--it wasn't any bigger than one of your hatboxes--I went out and stood at the gate. I kept thinking, 'By jingo, I'm a married man! Mr.

and Mrs. Mark Constantine.' And I felt sort of afraid--and almost ashamed. It frightened me because I knew it was two to feed instead of one, and I wondered if I'd done wrong to take Hannah away from the farmer's wife when I was only getting ten dollars a week.

"Well, when she came out of the door she looked as pretty as you'll look in all your stuff, and she came right up to me and said, game as a pebble, 'Mark, we're man and wife and we'll never be sorry, will we?

And when you're rich and I'm old we will stay just as loving!' I didn't feel sorry or frightened any more--not once. Not until you came and they told me she had gone on. Then I felt mighty sorry--and frightened. She looked so tired when I saw her then--so tired."

He paused, staring at his sunken gardens as seen from Beatrice's windows. Some men lazily raked new-cut gra.s.s and a peac.o.c.k preened itself by the sundial. The gla.s.s conservatory showed signs of activity. The florists were at work for the coming event. Then he looked at his daughter, who waited with polite restraint until his reverie was ended.

"I've given you all she would have had," he said, as if in debate with himself that this was the last reb.u.t.tal against possible criticism.

Beatrice glided over beside him; she looked out of the window, too, and then at her father. Something quite like tears was in his harsh eyes.

"Daddy," she began with a quick indrawing of her breath, "do you think she'd have wanted me to have all--all this?"

"Why wouldn't she?" he answered, taking her arm gently. He had always treated her with a formality amounting almost to awe.

"I don't know--only I sometimes do almost think--would you suspect it?

When I go to the office and watch those queerly dressed women bending over desks and earning a few dollars a week and having to live on it--and when I see how they manage to smile in spite of it--and how I waste and spend--and shed a great many tears--well, I wonder if it is quite safe to start as Steve and I are starting!" Then she threw her arms round him. "Steve won't believe that I've been serious, will he?

Now, daddy dear, please go 'way and let me dress, for I'm 'way late."

She kissed him almost patronizingly and he tiptoed out of her room, rather glad to get into his own domain--the majestic library with its partially arranged wedding gifts.

"We're doing ourselves proud," he remarked to his sister, who had been rearranging them.

"What I told Beatrice this morning. Only she is all nerves. She can't enjoy anything--it will be a relief to me, Mark, as well as a loss, when it is over."

Her brother viewed her with a quizzical expression. Like the rest of the world his sister never fooled him. But like all supermen there was one human being in whom all his trust was centred, and who very often thus brought about his defeat. In his case, as with Steve O'Valley, it chanced to be Beatrice.

Regarding her both men--merciless with their a.s.sociates and dubbed as fish-blooded coroners by their enemies--were like gullible children following a lovely and willful Pied Piperess. But Mark's sister with her vanities and fibs irritated and amused him by turns. Perhaps he resented her sharing this material triumph instead of the tired-faced woman in the churchyard.

"Do you remember the time you did the beadwork for the head carpenter's wife and when she paid you for it you spent the dollar for liquid rouge? Todd was so mad he wouldn't speak for a week," he chuckled, unkindly.