"And here I have found my best fortune," he said over and over again, his eyes resting fondly on Fräulein's face.
CHAPTER XXII
A WEDDING AND A SURPRISE
IT was a simple wedding that the U. S. C. went to in a body a few days after the arrival of the convalescent German soldier. Mr. Wheeler, the principal of the high school, acted as best man, and Miss Dawson, the domestic science teacher, was maid of honor, but Fräulein also gathered about her in the cottage sitting-room where the ceremony took place a group of the young girls who had been kindest to her when she was in trouble.
"I want you and the Ethels and Dorothy," she said to Helen; "and if your friends, Della and Margaret, would come with you it would give me greatest pleasure."
So the girls, all dressed in white, and wearing the forget-me-not pins that Grandfather Emerson insisted on giving them for the occasion, clustered around the young teacher, and the three boys, a forget-me-not in each scarfpin, held the ribbons that pressed gently back the cordial friends who were happy in Fräulein's happiness.
It was the Club that decorated the house with brown sedges and stalks of upstanding tawny corn and vines of bittersweet. And it was the Club that sang a soft German marriage song as the bride and groom drove off toward the setting sun in Grandmother Emerson's car.
Life seemed rather flat to the members of the U. S. C. after the wedding. For the last two months they had been so busy that every hour had been filled with work and play-work, and now that there was nothing especial scheduled for every waking moment it seemed as if they had nothing at all to do.