SOPHIE MCALLAN'S WEDDING
A few days after their return from Montana Pauline sat reading by the library window. They had come late to the country this Summer and the park of Castle Marvin had had time to leave and bloom into utter splendor. It was like a flowery kingdom in the Land of Faery, and as her eyes were lifted listlessly now and then from the printed page, they roamed over the garden which lay like some vast and radiant Oriental rug in Nature's palace hall. The distant forest was the palace wall, tapestried in green; its dome, a sky of tender blue; its lamp, the morning sun; its Prince, her Harry standing in the garden.
"He should always stand in the garden," thought Pauline tenderly. "The flowers are such a splendid foil for him."
She shut her eyes in sheer satiety of beauty. Not even the shabby man mopping his hot forehead as he came along the road, marred the picture. She was a little surprised to see him, a moment later, talking in an easy way with Harry but there was no false pride in her lover—brother and all men were his friends until they proved themselves his enemies. All except Owen.
The shabby man, holding his hat between his nervous hands, was evidently an applicant for work. Harry pointed to the flower beds and the rose trees with a nod of inquiry. The man assented vaguely. And they came on up the path together, making their way towards the servants' quarters over the garage. Harry paused at the window:
"I have hired a new gardener, who does not know his own name," he said as they passed on.
Pauline turned back to the pages of the Cosmopolitan. A picture in an article on the motor races caught her eye and held it for some reason that she did not at first understand. It was a picture of a man in auto-racer's costume, with a helmet tight upon his head and the keen features and daring eyes peculiar to those who live by peril. She had started to read the caption when she was interrupted by Bemis bringing her letters. With a little flutter of pleasure, womanlike, she began to read the letters from their postmarks before opening them. She hit upon one that brought a little peal of laughter from her, and she opened it eagerly and read:
"Walter and I want you and Harry to be with us at the wedding. Don't faint. We decided only yesterday, and it's going to be very quiet, with just the few people whom we can reach with informal notes like this. You can motor over in an hour. Tell Harry our lions arrived last Thursday from Germany, and after the wedding the keeper will exhibit them. If Harry won't come to see me married, he'll come to see the lions.
"Yours in a flurry, Sophie McAllan."
Pauline laughed again. It was like her unconventional chum, Sophie, to arrange her wedding with the same startling haste that had marked all the breathless events of her life. The lions she mentioned were typical of her original ideas. She had suddenly announced to her parents one day that she was tired of domestic animals and was going to keep lions instead. And her amused and amazed father had not only been forced to yield, but to keep his eye out all over Europe, Asia and Africa for new bargains in well bred lions ever since.