The autumn leaves were bright, the white fall anemones were in blossom, when Charlotte’s wedding-day came; and with leaves and anemones the little stone church was decorated.

Not an invitation of the customary sort had been sent out.  But, as is usual in a comfortable, un-aristocratic suburb, the news that Doctor Churchill and Miss Charlotte Birch wanted everybody who knew and cared for them to come to the church and see them married had spread until all understood.

The result was that no one of Doctor Churchill’s patients—­and he had won a large and growing practice among all classes of people—­felt left out or forgotten, and that, as the clock struck the hour of noon, the church was crowded to the doors with those who were real friends of the young people.

“Somehow I don’t feel a bit like a bride,” said Charlotte, looking, however, very much like one, as she stood in the centre of her mother’s room in bridal array.

Four elegant male figures, two in frock coats, two in more youthful but equally festive attire, were surveying her with satisfaction.

Near by hovered Celia, the daintiest of maids of honour:  Mrs. Birch, as charming as a girl herself in her pale gray silken gown:  and little Ellen Donohue, a six-year-old protegee of the family, her hazel eyes wide with gazing at Charlotte, whom she hugged intermittently and adored without cessation.

“You don’t feel like a bride, eh?” was Lanse’s reply to Charlotte’s statement.  “Well, I shouldn’t think you would—­an infant like you.  You look more suitable for a christening than for a marriage ceremony.  Father’s likely, when Doctor Elder asks who gives the bride away, to murmur, ‘Charlotte Wendell,’ thinking he’s inquiring the child’s name.”

Charlotte threw him a glance, half-shy, half-merry.  “As best man you should be saying complimentary things about your friend’s choice.”

“I am.  The trouble is you’re not old enough to enjoy being mistaken for a babe in arms.”

“I don’t think she looks like a child.  I think she’s the stunningest young woman I ever saw!” declared Just, with enthusiasm.  “If her hair was done up on top of her head she’d be a regular queen.”

Celia laughed.  Her own beautiful blond locks were piled high, and the style became her.  But Charlotte’s dusky braids were prettier low on the white neck, in the girlish fashion in which they had long been worn, and Celia announced this fact with a loving touch on the graceful coiffure her own hands had arranged for her sister.

“You can’t improve her,” she said.  “She looks like our Charlotte, and that’s just the way we want her to look.  That’s what Andy wants, too.”

“Of course he does.  And I can tell you, he looks like Andy,” Lanse asserted.  “Did you know he’d been making calls all the morning, the same as usual?  Made ’em till the last minute, too.  It isn’t fifteen minutes since I saw his machine roll in.  Hope he wasn’t rattled when he wrote his prescriptions.”