“I searched Mademoiselle Polly, and she is also not here,” answered Annette, again running down the back stairs.  From the long parlor and hall came an excited buzz, and Aunt Mary came out upon the back porch entirely this time.

“Every one of you go and look for them and leave me here quiet if you don’t want me to have a brain storm,” I said positively.  “They have probably gone to feed the chickens.”

Not risking me to make good my threat, Bess and Annette and Aunt Mary and Owen and Bud disappeared in as many different directions.  They left me standing alone out on the old porch, along the eaves of which rioted a rose, literally covered with small pink blossoms that kept throwing generous gusts of rosy petals down upon my tulle and lace and the bouquet of exotics I held in my hand.  Across the valley the skyline of Paradise Ridge seemed to be holding down huge rosy clouds that were trying to bubble up beyond it.

Suddenly I drew aside the tulle from my face, dropped my bouquet, and stretched out my arms to the sunset.

“I will lift up mine eyes to the hills—­Oh, Pan!” I said in a soft agony of supplication as I felt the crust around me begin a cosmic upheaval.

“Well, this looks like a Romney bundle and my woman to follow into the woods.  You know I won’t have this kind of a wedding,” suddenly fluted a stormy voice from the other side of the rose vine as Pan came up to the bottom of the steps.

“Why—­why,” I began to say, and then stopped, because the storm was still bursting over my head from Pan, who was attired in his usual Roycroft costume and had in one hand the Romney bundle and in the other the usual white bundle of herbs.  Also as usual he was guiltless of a hat, and the crests were unusually long and ruffled.

“You look foolish, and I won’t marry you that way.  Go straight up-stairs and put on real clothes, get your bundle, and come on.  I want to eat supper over on Sky Rock, and it is seven miles, and you’ll have to cook it.  I’m hungry,” he stormed still more furiously.

“Everybody is inside waiting, and it’s not your—­”

“Well, tell ’em all to come out in the open.  I won’t take a mate in a house, even if it has to be done with this foolish paper,” he continued to rage as he sought in the bandana bundle and produced an official document with a red tape on it.  “You go and put on your clothes, and I’ll break up this foolishness and get ’em in the yard.”

“But wait—­you don’t understand.  You—­”

“You’ve got all the rest of your life to explain disobeying me like this when I expressly wrote you just what I wanted you to—­” Pan went on with his raging.  At this juncture Uncle Cradd appeared at the back door in mild excitement.

“Nancy, my child, our friends are growing impatient, and is there anything the—­”