During those days, as busy as they were, Nellie and Tom had not forgotten Andy Royce.  Letters had been exchanged between the young folks and those in authority at Hope Seminary, and at last it was arranged that the gardener should be taken back and given another chance.  He promised faithfully to give up drinking.

The Rover boys had also had several visits from Josiah Crabtree.  They had found out that the former teacher of Putnam Hall was practically down and out, and, although he was not deserving of their sympathy, all felt sorry for him, and so not only did they give him the fifty dollars as Dick had promised, but they also presented him with a new outfit of clothing.  Then Josiah Crabtree departed, to accept the position as a teacher which had been offered to him.

“Where are you going to live after you are married, Tom?” questioned Sam.  “Are you going to the Outlook Hotel, too?”

“Not much, no hotel life for me!” returned Tom.  “Nellie and I talked it over with Dora and Dick, and we have taken an apartment together on Riverside Drive, a pretty spot overlooking the Hudson River.  We are going to keep house together, and we’ll all be ’as snug as a bug in a rug.’”

“Oh, that will be fine!”

“Some day, Sam, I suppose we’ll be taking in you and Grace,” went on Tom, with a grin.  “Well, we’ll do it even if we have to get a larger apartment.”

It had been decided that the wedding should take place in the Cedarville Union Church—­ a little stone edifice where Dick and Dora had been married, and which for years had been the church home of the Lanings and the Stanhopes.  Nellie and Tom had a host of friends, and it was a question how so many could be accommodated in such a small building.

“Well, if they can’t get in, they’ll have to stand outside,” said Tom, when talking the matter over.  “We’ll do the best we can.”  And then the invitations to the affair were addressed and sent out.

As was to be expected, the wedding presents were both numerous and costly, rivalling those received by Dora and Dick.  Mr. Anderson Rover duplicated the silver service given to his oldest son, and Dick and Sam joined in forwarding a handsomely decorated dinner set.  As Uncle Randolph and Aunt Martha had given Dick a set of encyclopedias, they sent other books to Nellie, but not forgetting a specially-bound volume of the uncle’s book on scientific farming.  In addition to all this came a bankbook from Mr. Anderson Rover with an amount written therein that was the duplicate of the amount he had presented to Dora and Dick.

“I knew he’d do it, Nellie,” said Tom, when, with their heads close together, the pair looked at the bankbook.  “It’s just like dad.”

“It’s too perfectly splendid for anything, Tom!” returned the girl, her eyes beaming.  “When I get the chance I’m just going to hug him to death!”