friend Aline has married off the last two years. How many more of you are
there?"

Aline, putting her arms about the bride's neck, drew her face to her lips
and whispered:--

"Dearie, my darling! I hope you will be so happy,--that it will be all you
can wish!" After these two had disappeared into the library, where there
was much commotion about the punch-bowl, the bride wondered--were _they_
happy? She had seen the engagement at Southern Springs,--the two most
ecstatic, unearthly lovers she had ever known.... But now? ...

Thus the stream of her little world flowed on, repeating its high-pitched
note of gratulation, of jocular welcome to the married state, as if to say,
'Well, now you are one of us--you've been brought in--this is life.' That
was what these smiling people were thinking, as they welcomed the neophytes
to the large vale of human experience. 'We have seen you through this
business, started you joyously on the common path. And now what will you
make of it?' For the occasion they ignored, good naturedly, the stones
along the road, the mistakes, the miserable failures that lined the path,
assuming the bride's proper illusion of triumph and confidence.... Among
the very last came the Johnstons, who had lingered outside while the more
boisterous ones pressed about the couple. Isabelle noticed that the large
brown eyes of the placid woman, who always seemed to her much older than
herself, were moist, and her face was serious when she said, "May it be all
that your heart desires--the Real Thing!"

A persistent aunt interrupted them here, and it was hours afterward when
Isabelle's thought came back to these words and dwelt on them. 'The real
thing!' Of course, that was what it was to be, her marriage,--the woman's