concerned--you and I'll be just as bad. My mother acted like a
martyr on the steamer; she was about as gay with her old friends
in London as you or I'd be at a funeral; she had an air of lofty
endurance and forbearance all the way, and, as I said to Margaret
Clay in Paris, the only time I really thought she was enjoying
herself was when she had to be hustled into a hospital, and for a
day or two there we really thought she was going to have
pneumonia!"

Rachael's delightful laugh rang out spontaneously from utter
relief of heart.

"Oh, Greg, you're delicious! Tell me about old Lady Frothingham,
is she difficult, too? And how's pretty Magsie Clay?"

"Now, if we're married to-morrow," the doctor Went on, too much
absorbed in his topic to be lightly distracted. "But do you hear
me, Ma'am? How does it sound?"

"It sounds delicious! Go on!"

"If we're married to-morrow, I say--it could be to-day just as
well, but I suppose you girls have to buy clothes, and have your
hands manicured, and so on--"

"You know we do, to say nothing of lying awake all night talking
about our beaux!"

"Well"--he conceded it somewhat reluctantly--"then, to-morrow,
some time before I go with Valentine to call for you, I'll go down