What Two Children Did | Page 5

they
were not ill.
The morning on which the wedding was to take place dawned as bright
and golden as could be desired.
It was a very simple, pretty wedding in the stone chapel, towards which,
in the early morning, the bridal party walked. Nan, Ethelwyn, and
Elizabeth went ahead, bearing flowers, and after them came Miss
Dorothy in her white gown, clinging to the arm of her sailor lover.
Mrs. Stevens and the children's mother, together with a few friends,
awaited them in the pretty church, and Nan's father married them. They
then all went to the bride's home for breakfast, immediately after which,
the young couple were going away for a year. This fact, and the

mother's sad face impaired the appetites of the guests, with three noble
exceptions. The trio at the end of the table ate with zest and unimpaired
enthusiasm, of the good things that they fondly believed might never
have reached their present point of perfection had it not been for their
skill.
"Should you think," Elizabeth paused to say, in a somewhat muffled
voice, entirely owing to plum cake and not grief, "that one of us is
married too?"
"My father," returned Nan loftily, "is not given to making mistakes of
that kind. There weren't husbands enough to go 'round anyway."
"What is a husband?"
"You've been helping make one, child, and you ask that!"
So Elizabeth concluded it was a small portion of the refreshments that
had escaped her notice.
Afterwards they went down to the harbor from which the bride and
groom were to sail.
"Like the owl and the pussy cat," said Ethelwyn, cheerfully.
As they kissed their friend good-bye, they placed around her neck a
pretty chain, hanging from which was a medallion with their pictures
painted on it.
"You can look at us when you get lonesome," suggested Beth.
The last good-bye was said, and they drove sadly home in a fine,
drenching rain that had suddenly fallen like a vail over their golden
day.
'Vada had started the open fires and they were cheerfully cracking,
while Polly from her pole croaked crossly, "Shut up, do! Quit making
all that fuss!"

Mrs. Rayburn took Aunty Stevens away with her, and by and by in the
afternoon, they found her tucked up on the couch in their sitting-room
looking somewhat happier.
"Aren't you glad you have us, and specially mother?" asked Beth,
kissing her.
There was only one answer possible to this, and it was given with such
emphasis that Ethelwyn nodded and said, "That's the way we feel.
Mother knows how to fix things right better'n anybody, unless it should
be God."
"Let's sing awhile, sister, while mother thinks of a story or two,"
suggested Beth.
So they squatted in front of the grate and sang,
"Chick-a-dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee, I am so glad that Jesus loves me."
Then they sang what they called "Precious Julias,"
"Little children who love Mary Deemer."
"Why," Beth stopped to ask, "does it say Precious Julias when it's 'bout
Mary Deemer, sister?"
"Middle name, prob'ly," answered Ethelwyn; "anyway that's Mary
Deemer," pointing to a picture of Murillo's "Magdalene," "and the
reason that she's loved by children, is because she is pretty and good. If
you are good, Elizabeth, people will love you."
"I'm as good as you are, anyway," began Beth wrathfully, when she
saw Nan in the doorway.
"May I come in?" she asked, wistfully. "Mother has a headache, father's
gone fishing in a boat, and I've a toothpick in my side."
"Come in, deary," said Mrs. Rayburn, who felt an infinite pity for
sturdy little Nan, with her invalid mother. "Bless me, what cold hands!

What's this thing you have in your side?" she continued, cuddling Nan
up in her lap.
Nan breathed a contented breath. "O, it's gone now. It's a sharp, pointed
thing that sticks me when I'm lonesome."
"We're having Sunday-school, the singing part, and you may come if
you're good, and know a verse, and won't baptize the Sunday-school,"
said Beth, multiplying conditions rapidly.
"I know a verse that father says he thinks ought to be in the Bible," said
Nan.
"Let's not have Sunday-school," she continued, snuggling down on Mrs.
Rayburn's shoulder. "It's so nice here, and I want to tell you 'bout my
dream I had the other night. Dreamed I went to heaven awhile, and
when I came home I slid down fifty miles of live wire and sissed all the
way down like a hot flatiron."
"There's a gold crack in the sky now that shows a little weenty bit of
Heaven's floor, I think, right now," said Ethelwyn, going to the west
window.
They all followed her, and sure enough there was the gold of the sky
shining through the misty rain clouds.
"Now, if God