What a wonderful prop and support was Bessie! How skillfully she
helped me to step once, twice, across the floor! and when I sank down,
very tired, in the comfortable easy-chair by the window, she knelt on
the floor beside me and bathed my forehead with fragrant cologne, that
certainly did not come from Mrs. Splinter's tall bottle of lavender
compound on the bureau.

"Oh, my dear boy, I have _so_ much to say! Where shall I begin?"

"At the end," I said quietly. "Send for Dr. Wilder."

"But don't you want to hear what a naughty girl--"

"No, I want to hear nothing but 'I, Elizabeth, take thee--'"

"But I've been so very jealous, so suspicious and angry. _Don't_ you
want to hear how bad I am?"

"No," I said, closing the discussion after an old fashion of the
Sloman cottage, "not until we two walk together to the Ledge
to-morrow, my little wife and I."

"Where's a card--your card, Charlie? It would be more proper-like, as
Mrs. Splinter would say, for you to write it."

"I will try," I said, taking out a card-case from my breast-pocket. As
I drew it forth my hand touched a package, Fanny Meyrick's packet.
Shall I give it to her now? I hesitated. No, we'll be married first in
the calm faith that each has in the other to-day, needing no outward
assurance or written word.