They all said they did.

“That’s all there is to the bookcase.  It can be taken to pieces in ten minutes and packed flat and shipped from Rosemont to Oklahoma with some chance of its reaching there unbroken; and it can be set up in another ten minutes.  What do you say?”

There wasn’t a dissenting voice, and they were so pleased with the scheme that they went to Mr. Atwood’s that very afternoon, looked at the wood, talked over the finish, and left the order.  It was so simple that the maker thought that he could have it done before the wedding and he agreed to take it apart and pack it for shipment so that there would be no danger of its not making its journey safely.

The wedding day was a trifle too warm, Dorothy thought as she gazed out early in the morning and considered the flowers that must be set in place several hours before the time when they were to be seen.

“We must take care not to have them look like those dandelions in the book wedding that began so joyously and ended all in a wizzle,” she murmured, and she was more than ever glad that they had taken the precaution to pick them the day before and have them in water.

By early afternoon all was in readiness and the girls were resting.  Miss Gertrude had not been allowed to help but had stayed quietly in her room.

The wedding was at half past four, and at that hour the little church, which looked perfectly lovely in the opinion of the decorators, was pleasantly filled with murmuring groups of Rosemont people, who agreed that the feathery decorations proved yet another plume in the caps of the Club members, and of New York people who gazed at the modest country chapel and found it charming.

There was a happy brrrr of pleasant comment while the organ played softly.  Roger and James were two of the ushers.  Friends of Edward’s, young doctors, were the other two.

As the organ broke into the Lohengrin march and Edward, with Tom for his best man, appeared at the chancel, Gertrude came down the aisle from the other end of the church.  She wore a simple white trailing dress of soft silk, clasped at the breast with the ancient brilliant-framed miniature of another Gertrude Merriam.  A pearl pendant, a gift from Ayleesabet, hung from her neck.  On her ungloved right hand the older Gertrude Merriam’s ring blazed beside Edward’s more modest offering.

The Ethels held each others’ hands as they stood behind the bride, wreaths of Queen Anne’s Lace over their arms, and a delicate blossom or two tucked under a pale blue ribbon in each filmy white hat.  It seemed but a moment to them and it was all over and Miss Gertrude was no longer “Miss Gertrude” but “Mrs. Edward.”  The doctor seemed to have put on new dignity and the girls found themselves wondering if they should ever call him “Edward” again.

Gertrude swept by them with her eyes full of happiness, but when she reached the back of the church she gave a lovely smile to the women and children of Rose House seated in the last pews.