CHAPTER XXXV

     DEAR BONNIE ROSE [she read, and smiled tenderly.  He
     was always getting her a new name]: 

“I’ve been to see Tennelly at last, and he’s great!  What do you think?  He’s not only coming to the wedding, but he’s asked if I will let him be best man, unless I’d rather have Pat!  I told Pat, and you ought to have heard him roar.  “Fat chance!  Me best man, with you two fellows around!” he said.

Father and my stepmother will come; but please tell Mother Marshall she needn’t worry because they will only stay for the ceremony.  I know she was a little troubled about my stepmother, lest things would seem plain to her; bless her dear heart!  But she needn’t at all, for she’s a kindly soul, according to her lights.  She’s not to blame that they’re only candle-lights instead of sunlight.  They will come in their private car, which will be dropped off from the morning train and picked up by the night express at the Junction, so you see they’ll have to leave for Sloan’s Station early in the afternoon.

But the greatest news of all I heard to-night!  Pat brought it, as usual.  It beats all how he finds out pleasant things.  You remember how we wished that Burns hadn’t gone to China yet, so he could marry us?  Well, he’s coming back.  He’s been sent on some errand or other for the government, in company with a Chinaman or two, and he’s due in San Francisco a week before the wedding.  I’ve sent a wireless to ask him to stop over and take part in the ceremony.  I was sure this would meet with your approval.  Of course, we’ll ask your minister out there to assist.  You don’t know how this pleases me.  There’s only one of the professors I’d have cared to ask, and he’s with his wife, who is very ill at a sanitarium.  It seems somehow as if Burns belonged to us, doesn’t it, dear?

I stood to-night on the steps of the church and looked at a ray of the setting sun that was slanting between buildings and laying a finger of gold on the old dirty windows across the street till they blazed into sudden glory.  As I looked the houses faded away, as they do in a moving picture, and gradually melted into a great open space that stretched a whole big block, all clear and green with thick velvety grass.  There were trees in the space—­a lot of them—­and hammocks under some of them, with little children playing about.  At the farthest end there were tennis-courts and a baseball diamond; and who do you think I saw teaching some boys to pitch, but Pat!  On the other side of the street a big, old warehouse had been converted into a gymnasium with a swimming-pool.

All around that block there were model tenements, with thousands of windows; and light and air and cheerfulness.  There were flowers in little beds between the curbing and the pavement, that the children could water and cultivate and