“Oh! that’s not many,” said Polly; “sixty-five is the very smallest number that we could manage.  We’ve been over the list ever so many times, and struck out quantities of names.  You see, everybody loves Mamsie, and they’ll want to see her married.”

“I know—­I know,” assented the doctor, “but that makes one hundred and thirty eyes.  Did you ever think of that, Polly?”

Polly burst into such a laugh that Jasper popped in, and after him, Phronsie, and a general hilarity now reigning, the dreaded wedding preparations soon sank away from the doctor’s perturbed vision.

But they went on merrily nevertheless.  All over the old stone mansion there were hints of the on-coming festivities; and though all signs of it were tucked away from the little doctor on his occasional visits, the smothered excitement flamed afresh immediately his departure became an assured thing.  Everybody had the wildest plans for the occasion; it appearing impossible to do enough for the one who had stood at the helm for five long years, and who was to be reigning housekeeper for as much longer as her services were needed.

And Dr. Fisher never knew how perilously near he had been to the verge of brilliant evening festivities, in the midst of which he was to be ushered into matrimony.

For Polly had suddenly waked one morning, to find herself, not “famous,” but alive with the sense of being—­as her mother had so often expressed it—­“Mamsie’s little right-hand woman.”

“It will be much better to have everything plain,” said Polly, communing with herself, as she turned on her pillow.  “Mamsie has always been without show, of any kind, and so,” but here Polly’s heart stood still.  Dearly she loved the bright, conspicuous accompaniments to the wedding whereby Mr. King was determined to show his respect for the family under his care.  And her soul secretly longed for the five hundred guests named on a list of the old gentleman’s drawing up.  And the feast and the lights, and the pretty dresses, and the dancing party for the young people to follow.  For Mr. King had announced himself as about to usher in the brightest of days for the young Peppers to remember.

“Besides it brings our new physician into notice,” he would answer when any faint protest was made.  “And we shall all have reason to be immensely proud of him, I tell you!”

“Oh, dear!” cried Polly, burrowing deeper within the pillow folds, “why aren’t pleasant things best to do?  Why, I wonder!”

Cherry, twittering in the window, chirped something vague and unsatisfactory.  Polly brought up her brown head suddenly and laughed.

“Nonsense! our happiness doesn’t depend upon a lot of people coming together to help it along.  Mamsie’s face, whenever Grandpapa plans all this magnificence, is enough to make me feel wretched at the thought of it.  Dear Mamsie! she’s afraid of ingratitude if she doesn’t try to like it.  She shall have the little morning wedding with a few people around, and the gray silk gown instead of the lavender one Grandpapa wants her to wear, for Mamsie always knows just what is right.”