"Do you remember the old print of the Madison Cottage that we discovered in the print room of the Library one afternoon? I found a copy of it in a second-hand book shop down town a few days ago. In case you don't object to having it I am "inclosing it herewith," as we say in our office correspondence a hundred times a week. Except that the people to whom we send the inclosures usually don't want them, and I am hoping that you will care something about this.
"Very sincerely yours,
"RICHARD SMITH."
It was at the close of a pleasant afternoon in the good town of Boston, only a few days after the arrival of this letter, that two girls and a young man rather hastily descended the front steps of a certain substantial and dignified dwelling in the Back Bay district. That something a little out of the ordinary had occurred might have been guessed from the expression of guilt on the faces of certainly two and perhaps all three of them, and possibly by the half-embarrassed alacrity with which the young man escorted his companions down the steps. No one of them apparently cared even to glance back at the building they had just left, although its occupancy was as respectable as its appearance indicated; and each one seemed oddly reluctant to look at either of the others. It was not until their feet stood soundly on the flagged sidewalk and the house was well behind them that the tension snapped and the young man spoke.
"Well, Isabel," said he, "I'm awfully glad I've done it, but that ceremony was certainly terrific. I believe that to go through such a thing twice in a span of life would unhinge a mind like mine, whose hinges creak slightly at times, anyway."
"Very well, Charlie," responded the young lady addressed, smiling. "I think I can arrange that you shan't have to, for the Hurds are a notoriously long-lived family."
"But what was so terrific about it, Charlie?" inquired the other young lady. "It didn't seem to me to differ much from any other marriage ceremony—and you must have heard dozens at one time or another."
"Oh, I suppose I have," was the reply; "but somehow that man made me feel like a worm—and a worm that's only by the most extraordinary luck managed to keep out of jail. I felt like a cheap political hack accepting the nomination for an important office that I was perfectly certain I couldn't fill acceptably."
"Well, he did look a trifle severe—not very cheerful," conceded Miss
Maitland.
"Cheerful! He looked about as cheerful as a firm believer in infant damnation during a bad attack of dyspepsia. But never mind." He turned to the other girl. "Now that it's all over, how does it feel, Isabel, to be Mrs. Charles Sylvester Wilkinson?"