It was the Birches’ custom to make as little as possible of family crises.  Talk and laugh as lightly as they would, however, every one of them was watching Charlotte with anxiety, for it was the first break in the dear circle, and it seemed almost as if they could have better spared any other.

Yet Charlotte was going to live no farther away than next door—­this was the comfort of the situation.

“Well, I must be off to look after my duties to the groom,” Lanse announced presently, with a precautionary glance into his mother’s mirror to make sure that not a hair of his splendour was disturbed.  “I ought to have been with him before this, only my infatuation for the bride makes my case difficult.  You’ve heard of these fellows who hang about another chap’s girl till the last minute, doing the forsaken act.  I feel something like that.  Good luck, little girl.  Keep cool, and trust Andy and Doctor Elder to get you safely married.”

He stooped to kiss her, and Charlotte held him close for an instant.  But he made the brotherly embrace a short one, comprehending that much of that sort of thing would be unsafe both for Charlotte and her family, and went gaily away to the house next door.

“Nerve good?” Lanse asked Doctor Churchill, an hour later as they waited in the vestry for the summons of the organ.

Doctor Churchill smiled.  “Pretty steady,” he answered.  “Still—­I’m aware something is about to happen.”

Lanse eyed him affectionately.

“Do you know it’s a good deal to me to be gaining three brothers by this day’s work?” the doctor added; and Lanse felt a sudden lump in his throat, which he had to swallow before he could answer: 

“I assure you we’re feeling pretty rich, to-day, too, old fellow.”

It was all over presently—­a very simple, natural sort of affair, with the warm October sunlight streaming through the richly coloured windows upon the figures at the altar, touching Celia’s bright hair into a halo, and sending a ruby beam across the trailing folds of Charlotte’s bridal gown.

There was no display of any sort.  The whole effect was somehow that of a girl being married in the enclosing circle of her family, without thought of the hundreds of eyes upon her.  A quiet wedding breakfast followed, at which Doctor Forester and his son, the latter lately returned from a long period of study abroad, were the only guests.  Doctor Churchill’s housekeeper, Mrs. Fields, although invited to be present as a guest insisted on remaining in the kitchen.

“Just as if,” she said, when everybody in turn remonstrated with her, “when I’ve looked after that boy’s food from the days when he ate nothing but porridge and milk, I was going to let anybody else feed him with his wedding breakfast!”