“I don’t mean to stay here always,” Crawford said, “but it will do me good to be here for a time.  Harley’s a tiptop old chap and a thoroughly competent general practitioner.  He’ll give me points that may be invaluable by and by.  And a country practice is the best of training.”

Mary nodded.  “Yes,” she said.  “And at the end of this winter I shall have Simeon Crocker well broken in as manager of the store.  And I can sell the tea-room, I think.  My uncles don’t care much for that, anyway.  They will be perfectly happy with the store to putter about in and with Simeon to take the hard work and care off their shoulders they can putter to their hearts’ content.”

“But suppose Simeon doesn’t make it pay!” suggested Crawford.  “That’s at least a possibility.  Everyone isn’t a Napoleon—­I should say a Queen Elizabeth—­of finance and business like yourself, young lady.”

Mary’s confidence was not in the least shaken.

“It will pay,” she said.  “If the townspeople and the summer cottagers don’t buy enough—­well, you and I can help out.  There is that money in the West, you know.”

He nodded emphatically.

“Good!” he cried.  “You’re right.  It will be a chance for us—­just a little chance.  And they will never know.”

He went away at the end of the week, but he came back for Christmas and again at Easter and again in the latter part of May.  And soon after that, on a day in early June, he stood, with Sam Keith at his elbow, in the parlor of the white house by the shore, while Edna Keith played “Here Comes the Bride” on the piano which had been hired for the occasion; and, with her hand in Zoeth’s arm, and with Captain Shadrach and Barbara Howe just behind, Mary walked between the two lines of smiling, teary friends to meet him.

It was a lovely wedding; everyone said so, and as there probably never was a wedding which was not pronounced lovely by friends and relatives, we may be doubly certain of the loveliness of this.  And there never was a more beautiful bride.  All brides are beautiful, more or less, but this one was more.  Isaiah, who had been favored with a peep at the rehearsal on the previous evening, was found later on by Shadrach in the kitchen in a state of ecstatic incoherence.

“I swan to godfreys!” cried Isaiah.  “Ain’t—­ain’t she an angel, though!  Did you ever see anything prettier’n she is in them clothes and with that—­that moskeeter net on her head?  An angel—­yes, sir-ee! one of them cherrybins out of the Bible, that’s what she is.  And to think it’s our Mary-’Gusta!  Say, Cap’n Shad, will checkered pants be all right to wear with my blue coat tomorrow?  I burnt a hole in my lavender ones tryin’ to press the wrinkles out of ’em.  And I went down to the wharf in ’em last Sunday and they smell consider’ble of fish, besides.”