were friendly, and pleased with everything.

"His mother," Alix told Peter, "is the sort of handsome person who
keeps a boarding-house and marries a rich, adoring old Klondike
man."

"Is that what she did?" Peter whispered, amused.

"She's only sixteen years older than Martin is!" Alix confided
further. "She kissed Cherry and said, 'You're just a baby doll,
that's what you are!' And he calls me 'Ma'am,' and Cherry
'Sister!' They've got two little children, a boy and a girl. Dad
likes them both."

"Well, that's good!" Peter approved. "Does Cherry?"

"Oh, anything that belongs to Martin is perfect!" Alix answered,
in indulgent scorn, as she abruptly departed to see to some detail
concerning the carriages, the music, or the breakfast. She and
Anne were in a constant state of worry during the morning; their
plans for seating two score of persons were changed twenty times;
they conspired in agitated whispers behind doors and in the
pantry.

But the first wedding went well. At twelve o'clock Charity
Strickland became Charity Lloyd, and was kissed and toasted and
congratulated until her lovely little face was burning with
colour, and her blue eyes were bewildered with fatigue. She stood
in the drawing-room doorway, her bouquet with its trailing ribbons
in her gloved hands, and as each one of all the old friends and