How brief is a marriage ceremony! A few words are spoken and two lives are changed forever, never again to be the same as they were less than ten minutes before, but filled with new duties, new obligations, and the responsibilities we must all assume when we utter the words: “I will.” God meant that it should be so, and it is one of this world’s many blessings.
“THE BRIDE, HER HAND RESTING LIGHTLY ON THE ARM OF HER FRIEND.”
The reception Miss Preston gave for her “adopted daughter,” as she called Miss Howard, now Mrs. Chichester, was long talked over by the school, and quoted by the girls as “our reception” for months.
Mr. and Mrs. Chichester sailed for Europe on the same steamer which carried Miss Preston and her girls, and a happier, merrier party it would have been hard to find. Toinette and Mr. Reeve went to bid them farewell and a pleasant voyage, and the last faces those upon the great ship saw as they swung out into the stream were Toinette’s and her father’s.
And now we, too, must leave them—leave them to the happy summer vacation, when they learned how dear they were to each other, and what a dear old world this is, after all, when two people manage to look at it through little Dan Cupid’s spectacles.