"Hasn't Aunt Frances done things beautifully?" Mary asked; "she insisted
on it, Leila. We could never have afforded the orchids and the roses;
and the ices are charming--pink hearts with cupids shooting at them with
silver arrows----"

"Oh, Mary," the dark-haired girl laid her flushed cheek against the arm
of her taller friend. "I think weddings are wonderful."

Mary shook her head. "I don't," she said after a moment's silence. "I
think they're horrid. I like Gordon Richardson well enough, except when
I think that he is stealing Constance, and then I hate him."

But the bride was coming down, with all the murmuring voices behind her,
and now the silken ladies were descending the stairs to the dining-room,
which took up the whole lower west wing of the house and opened out upon
an old-fashioned garden, which to-night, under a chill October moon,
showed its rows of box and of formal cedars like sharp shadows against
the whiteness.

Into this garden came, later, Mary. And behind her Susan Jenks.

Susan Jenks was a little woman with gray hair and a coffee-colored skin.
Being neither black nor white, she partook somewhat of the nature of both
races. Back of her African gentleness was an almost Yankee shrewdness,
and the firm will which now and then degenerated into obstinacy.

"There ain't no luck in a wedding without rice, Miss Mary. These paper
rose-leaf things that you've got in the bags are mighty pretty, but how
are you going to know that they bring good luck?"