“If anybody deserves a toast, Jeffy boy, I think it’s you.  You’ve eaten so many slices of mine—­burnt to a cinder—­and never winced!  If that isn’t heroism, what is?”

* * * * *

BOOK II

THE CHURCHILL LATCH-STRING

* * * * *

CHAPTER I

“Here’s another, Charlotte!”

Young Justin Birch’s lusty shout rang through the house from hall to kitchen, vibrating even as far as the second-story room in the rear, where Charlotte herself happened at that moment to be.  In response people appeared from everywhere.  The bride-elect was the last to put in an appearance, and when she came, there was a certain reluctance in her aspect.

“Hurry up, there!” admonished Just, already busy with chisel and hammer at the slender, flat box which lay upon the hall floor, in the centre of an interested group.  He paused to glance up at his sister, where she had stopped upon the landing.  “You act as if you didn’t want to see what’s in it,” he remonstrated, whacking away vigorously.

“Indeed I do,” Charlotte declared, coming on down the staircase, smiling at the faces upturned toward her, which were smiling back, every one.  “But I’m beginning to feel as if I—­as if they—­as if—­”

“It must seem odd to feel like that,” John Lansing agreed, quizzically.  Lanse had but just arrived, having come on especially for the wedding, from the law-school at which he had been for two years.

Celia slipped her arm about her younger sister’s shoulders.  “I know what she means,” she said, in her gentle way.  “It’s so unexpected to her, after sending out no invitations at all, that gifts should keep pouring in like this.  But it’s not unexpected to us.”

“Oh, I know how many of them come from father’s and mother’s friends, and how many from Andy’s grateful patients.  It’s all the more overwhelming on that account.”

“Look out there, Just!” The admonition came from Jeff, and consequently was delivered from some six feet in the air, where that nineteen-year-old’s head was now carried.  “Don’t split those pieces; they’ll be fine for the Emerson boys building.”

“That’s so.”  Just wielded his tools with more care.  Presently he had the long parcel lying on the floor.  At this moment Mr. Roderick Birch opened the outer hall door.

“As usual,” was his smiling comment, as he laid aside hat and overcoat and joined the circle.  “Charlotte’s latest?”

Charlotte herself undid the wrappings, wondering what the gift could be.  She disclosed a long piece of dingy-looking metal.

“A new shingle for Andy!” cried Jeff.

Just turned the heavy slab over, and it proved to be of copper.  Words came into view, hammered and beaten into the glinting metal.  An effective conventionalised border surrounded the whole.