"I hope you are not struck by finding us gentlemen? We've been tolerably growed ever since you've known us," said Bruce.
"It was a delightful day? Not a blemish in it?" asked Cousin Charlotte, who had come up with Polly for the night to pay tribute to the alumni.
"It was the most beautiful, faultless day one could imagine," said Hester.
Basil began to count on his fingers. "Ten days from to-day I can easily imagine far more beautiful," he said, with a rapturous look at Wythie.
"Rhoda has made us chocolate, dear Alumni," said the Grey mother. "And we're going to drink your health from the cup from which Washington pledged the Grey of that day."
She did not care to discuss that ten days distant celebration, glad as she was that Wythie was to be so safely happy.
It was such a very short time to keep the circle in the little grey house unbroken, and those ten days sped like swallows over the old roof.
There had been stirring discussions as to the manner of Oswyth's marrying; only one thing had been settled from the first: Wythie insisted on a perfectly simple wedding, and on being married in her beloved little home.
When it came to inviting and omitting, the matter grew difficult. The Greys suddenly realized how long was their list of friends with a claim, once they admitted the claim of any outside the most strictly limited circle of relatives and intimate friends. Hester and Frances must be present, yet why not with them the Fayre girls and young men with whom Wythie had played from the day when her shoes were guiltless of heels and more than liable to bend around the ankles?
It ended in asking so many people that it was "a question as to how they could be nearer present than under the apple-trees," Prue said, and her remark solved the problem. It was June, and all the doors and windows of the little grey house could be thrown open to its warmth. Like all early houses the grey house had many doors, letting its guests step forth under its trees with but a brief delay upon broad flagstone steps. Wythie was to be married in the big wainscotted room in which her father had spent most of his dreaming days. Hester, Frances, Rob, and Prue, with the help of Bruce and Bartlemy, with Lester, had covered the walls between wainscotting and low ceiling with mountain laurel, and the effect was most beautiful.