Ruth and Jack, with Peter’s covert endorsement, had wanted to slip into the village church some afternoon at dusk, with daddy and Peter and Miss Felicia, and one or two more, and then to slip out again and disappear.  MacFarlane had been in favor of the old Maryland home, with Ruth’s grandmother in charge, and the neighbors driving up in mud-encrusted buggies and lumbering coaches, their inmates warmed by roaring fires and roaring welcomes—­fat turkeys, hot waffles, egg-nogg, apple-toddy, and the rest of it.  The head of the house of Breen expressed the opinion (this on the day Jack gave his check for the bonds prior to returning them to Isaac, who wouldn’t take a cent of interest) that the ceremony should by all means take place in Grace Church, after which everybody would adjourn to his house on the Avenue, where the wedding-breakfast would be served, he being nearest of kin to the groom, and the bride being temporarily without a home of her own—­a proposition which, it is needless to say, Jack declined on the spot, but in terms so courteous and with so grand and distinguished an air that the head of the house of Breen found his wonder increasing at the change that had come over the boy since he shook the dust of the Breen home and office from his feet.

The Grande Dame of Geneseo did not agree with any of these makeshifts.  There would be no Corklesville wedding if she could help it, with gaping loungers at the church door; nor would there be any Maryland wedding with a ten-mile ride over rough roads to a draughty country-house, where your back would freeze while your cheeks burned up; nor yet again any city wedding, with an awning over the sidewalk, a red carpet and squad of police, with Tom, Dick, and Harry inside the church, and Harry, Dick and Tom squeezed into an oak-panelled dining-room at high noon with every gas-jet blazing.

And she did not waste many seconds coming to this conclusion.  Off went a telegram, after hearing the various propositions, followed by a letter, that might have melted the wires and set fire to the mail-sack, so fervid were the contents.

“Nonsense!  My dear Ruth, you will be married in my house and the breakfast will be in the garden.  If Peter and your father haven’t got any common sense, that’s no reason why you and Jack should lose your wits.”

This, of course, ended the matter.  No one living or dead had ever been found with nerve enough to withstand Felicia Grayson when she had once made up her mind.

And then, again, there was no time to lose in unnecessary discussions.  Were not Ruth and her father picnicking in a hired villa, with half their household goods in a box-car at Morfordsburg?—­and was not Jack still living in his two rooms at Mrs. Hicks’s?  The only change suggested by the lovers was in the date of the wedding, Miss Felicia having insisted that it should not take place until November, “Four whole weeks away.”  But the