Part 13

"You'll not see me sail."

He wheeled upon her. He had her hand in his grasp. "And if you don't go?"

"I'll stay."

"With me?"

She laughed irresistibly. "How could I stay without you?"

"Will you marry me before your father goes?"

"Oh, Tony, Tony----"

"We can't be married without his blessing, can we?"

"No--dear father."

"Then----"

"I'll tell you to-morrow," said she.

IX.--A BISHOP AND A HAY-WAGON

Juliet Marcy's prospective maid-of-honour found Anthony Robeson's best man at her elbow the moment she entered the waiting-room of the big railway station. Now, although she greeted him with a charming little conscious look, there was nothing either new or singular about the quiet rush he had made across the waiting-room the instant he saw her. The rest of the party of twenty people who were going down into the country to the Marcy-Robeson wedding understood it perfectly, although the engagement had not been announced and probably would not be until Wayne Carey should have an income decidedly larger than he had at present.

Judith Dearborn joined the group at once, and Carey reluctantly followed her. Judith had a way of joining groups and of giving her betrothed many impatient half-hours thereby.

"Just think of this," she said to the others. "When I knew Juliet had really given in to Anthony Robeson at last I thought I should be asked to assist at an impressive church wedding. But here we are going down to what Tony describes as 'a box of a house' in the most rural of suburbs. If it's really as small as he says even twenty people will be a tight fit."

"How in the world did they come to be married there?" asked the sister of the best man. Everybody had been summoned to this wedding so hurriedly and so informally that nobody knew much about it.

The son of the Bishop--whose father was going down to perform the ceremony--answered promptly:

"Tony tells me its Juliet's own choice. You see they furnished the house together, with her aunt, Mrs. Dingley; and Juliet fell so in love with it that she must needs be married in it. What's occurred to that girl I don't know. After the Robesons of Kentucky lost their money and everything else but their social standing I thought it was all up with Anthony. But he's plucky. He's made a way for himself, and he's won Juliet somehow. He seems to be a late edition of that obstinate chap who remarked 'I will find a way or make one.' By Jove--he must have made one when he convinced Juliet Marcy that she could be happy in a house where twenty people are a tight fit."

When the train stopped at the small station Judith Dearborn said in Wayne Carey's ear, as he glanced wonderingly from the train: "Is this it? Juliet Marcy must be perfectly crazy!"

"She certainly must," admitted Robeson's best man. But he stifled a sigh. If Juliet Marcy could do so crazy a thing as to marry Anthony Robeson on the comparatively small salary that young man--brought up to do nothing at all--was now earning, why must Wayne Carey wait for several times that income before he could have Juliet's closest friend? Was there really such a difference in girls?

But at the next instant he was shouting hilariously, and so was everybody else except the Bishop and the Bishop's wife, who only smiled indulgently. The rest of the party were young people, and their glee brooked no repression. The moment they reached the little platform they comprehended not only that they were coming to a most informal wedding--they were also in for a decidedly novel lark.

Close to the edge of the platform stood a great hay-wagon, cushioned with fragrant hay and garlanded with goldenrod and purple asters. Standing erect on the front, one hand grasping the reins which reached out over a four-in-hand of big, well-groomed, flower-bedecked farm horses, the other waving a triumphant greeting to his friends, was Anthony Robeson, in white from head to foot, his face alight with happiness and fun. He looked like a young king; there could be no other comparison for his splendid outlines as he towered there. And better yet, he looked as he had ever looked, through prosperity and through poverty, like a "Robeson of Kentucky."

Below him, prettier than she had ever been--and that was saying much--her eyes brilliant with the spirit of the day, laughing, dressed also in white, a big white hat drooping over her brown curls, stood Juliet Marcy.

In a storm of salutations and congratulations the guests rushed toward this extraordinary equipage and the radiant pair who were its charioteers. All regrets over the probable commonplaceness of a small country wedding had vanished.

"Might have known they would do things up in shape somehow," grunted the Bishop's son approvingly. "This is the stuff. Conventionality be tabooed. They're going to the other extreme, and that's the way to do. If you don't want an altar and candles, and a high-mucky-muck at the organ, have a hay-wagon. Gee!--Let me get up here next to Ben Hur and the lady!"

Even the Bishop, sitting with clerical coat-tails carefully parted, his handsome face beaming benevolently from under his round hat, and Mrs. Bishop, granted by special dispensation a cushion upon the hay seat, enjoyed that drive. Anthony, plying a long, beribboned lash, aroused his heavy-footed steeds into an exhilarating trot, and the hay-wagon, carrying safely its crew of young society people in their gayest mood, swept over the half-mile from the station to the house like a royal barge.

As they drew up a chorus of "Oh's!" not merely polite but sincerely surprised and admiring, recognised the quaint beauty of the little house. It was no commonplace country home now, though the changes wrought had been comparatively slight. It looked as if it might have stood for years in just this fashion, yet it was as far removed from its primitive characterless condition as may be an artist's drawing of a face upon which he has altered but a line.

Mrs. Dingley and Mr. Horatio Marcy--a pair whose presence anywhere would have been a voucher for the decorum of the most unconventional proceedings--welcomed the party upon the wide, uncovered porch.