By and by he came down, in dry clothes but looking dreadfully uncomfortable.  Mabel said she could imagine how he felt.  Josephine was standing by the open fire when he entered the room, and no one else was there but Mabel.  Josephine went right to him and put her arms around his neck.

“Dearest, dearest!” she said.  “How can I ever thank you?” Her voice was very low, but Mabel heard it.  George said right off, “There is a way.”  That shows how quick and clever he is, for some men might not think of it.  Then Mabel Blossom left the room, with slow, reluctant feet, and went up-stairs to Kittie.

That’s why Mabel has just gone to Kittie’s home for a few days.  She and Kittie are to be flower-maids at Josephine’s wedding.  I hope it is not necessary for me to explain to my intelligent readers that her husband will be George Morgan.  Kittie says he confessed the whole thing to Josephine, and she forgave him, and said she would marry him anyhow; but she explained that she only did it on Kittie’s account.  She said she did not know to what lengths the child might go next.

So my young friends have gone to mingle in scenes of worldly gayety, and I sit here in the twilight looking at the evening star and writing about love.  How true it is that the pen is mightier than the sword!  Gayety is well in its place, but the soul of the artist finds its happiness in work and solitude.  I hope Josephine will realize, though, why I cannot describe her wedding.  Of course no artist of delicate sensibilities could describe a wedding when she hadn’t been asked to it.

Poor Josephine!  It seems very, very sad to me that she is marrying thus late in life and only on Kittie’s account.  Why, oh, why could she not have wed when she was young and love was in her heart!

The Wizard’s Touch

BY ALICE BROWN

Jerome Wilmer sat in the garden, painting in a background, with the carelessness of ease.  He seemed to be dabbing little touches at the canvas, as a spontaneous kind of fun not likely to result in anything serious, save, perhaps, the necessity of scrubbing them off afterwards, like a too adventurous child.  Mary Brinsley, in her lilac print, stood a few paces away, the sun on her hair, and watched him.

“Paris is very becoming to you,” she said at last.

“What do you mean?” asked Wilmer, glancing up, and then beginning to consider her so particularly that she stepped aside, her brows knitted, with an admonishing,

“Look out! you’ll get me into the landscape.”

“You’re always in the landscape.  What do you mean about Paris?”

“You look so—­so travelled, so equal to any place, and Paris in particular because it’s the finest.”

Other people also had said that, in their various ways.  He had the distinction set by nature upon a muscular body and a rather small head, well poised.  His hair, now turning gray, grew delightfully about the temples, and though it was brushed back in the style of a man who never looks at himself twice when once will do, it had a way of seeming entirely right.  His brows were firm, his mouth determined, and the close pointed beard brought his face to a delicate finish.  Even his clothes, of the kind that never look new, had fallen into lines of easy use.