It was one of the things for the children to remember always, that Miss Dorothy was married while they were there to help.
They helped so much in the matter of scraping all the cake and icing pans, stoning, and especially eating, raisins, that it was a wonder 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.