“Are you packed?” Ralph asked in astonishment.

“Nearly.  I wish you’d go over things and make them look a little neater, if you can.  I’d hate to have a girl see the inside of that suitcase, the way it is.  Where shall I put my cigars?  They’ll make everything smell, wherever I put them.  All my clothes seem to smell of cooking, or starch, or something.  I don’t know what Mahailey does to them,” he ended bitterly.

Ralph looked outraged.  “Well, of all ingratitude!  Mahailey’s been ironing your damned old shirts for a week!”

“Yes, yes, I know.  Don’t rattle me.  I forgot to put any handkerchiefs in my trunk, so you’ll have to get the whole bunch in somewhere.”

Mr. Wheeler appeared in the doorway, his Sunday black trousers gallowsed up high over a white shirt, wafting a rich odor of bayrum from his tumbled hair.  He held a thin folded paper delicately between his thick fingers.

“Where is your bill-book, son?”

Claude caught up his discarded trousers and extracted a square of leather from the pocket.  His father took it and placed the bit of paper inside with the bank notes.  “You may want to pick up some trifle your wife fancies,” he said.  “Have you got your railroad tickets in here?  Here is your trunk check Dan brought back.  Don’t forget, I’ve put it in with your tickets and marked it C. W., so you’ll know which is your check and which is Enid’s.”

“Yes, sir.  Thank you, sir.”

Claude had already drawn from the bank all the money he would need.  This additional bank check was Mr. Wheeler’s admission that he was sorry for some sarcastic remarks he had made a few days ago, when he discovered that Claude had reserved a stateroom on the Denver express.  Claude had answered curtly that when Enid and her mother went to Michigan they always had a stateroom, and he wasn’t going to ask her to travel less comfortably with him.

At seven o’clock the Wheeler family set out in the two cars that stood waiting by the windmill.  Mr. Wheeler drove the big Cadillac, and Ralph took Mahailey and Dan in the Ford.  When they reached the mill house the outer yard was already black with motors, and the porch and parlours were full of people talking and moving about.

Claude went directly upstairs.  Ralph began to seat the guests, arranging the folding chairs in such a way as to leave a passage from the foot of the stairs to the floral arch he had constructed that morning.  The preacher had his Bible in his hand and was standing under the light, hunting for his chapter.  Enid would have preferred to have Mr. Weldon come down from Lincoln to marry her, but that would have wounded Mr. Snowberry deeply.  After all, he was her minister, though he was not eloquent and persuasive like Arthur Weldon.  He had fewer English words at his command than most human beings, and even those did not come to him readily.  In his pulpit he sought for them and struggled with them until drops of perspiration rolled from his forehead and fell upon his coarse, matted brown beard.  But he believed what he said, and language was so little an accomplishment with him that he was not tempted to say more than he believed.  He had been a drummer boy in the Civil War, on the losing side, and he was a simple, courageous man.