"He wouldn't dare to," said Judy, with a frown; "she _shan't_ mend his horrid socks. Why did you get such a nasty wedding present, Babs?" A flush of delicate color spread all over Babs' little fair face. She winked her blue eyes hard to keep back the tears which Judy's scathing remarks were bringing to the surface, and said, after a pause: "It's not a horrid present, it's lovely; and anyhow"--her voice becoming energetic as this happy mode of revenge occurred to her--"it is better than yours, for you has got nothing at all." "Oh, I'll have something when the day comes," replied Judy, in a would-be careless tone. "But you hasn't any money." "Money isn't everything. I'll manage, you'll see." From this moment Judy's whole heart and soul were absorbed in one fierce desire to give Hilda a present which should be better and sweeter and more full of love than anybody else's. After two or three days of anxious thought and nights of troubled dreams, she made up her mind what her present should be. It should consist of holly berries and ivy, and these holly berries and that ivy should be picked by Judy's own fingers, and should be made into a bouquet by Judy herself; and the very center of this bouquet should contain a love-note--a little twisted note, into which Judy would pour some of her soul. It should be given to Hilda at the very last moment when she was starting for church; and though she was all in white from top to toe--all in pure white, with a bouquet of white flowers in her hand--yet she should carry Judy's bouquet, with its thorns and its crimson berries, as a token of her little sister's faithful love. "She shall carry it to church with her," said Judy, with inward passion. "I'll make her promise beforehand, and I know she won't break her word to me. It will be a little bit of me she'll have with her, even when she is giving herself to that horrid Jasper." The little girl quite cheered up when this idea came to her. She became helpful and pleasant once more, and allowed Babs to chatter to her about the insect world, which had now practically gone to sleep; and about the delights of the time when their chrysalides, which they had put away so carefully in the butterfly-case, should burst out into living and beautiful things. The day before the wedding came, and the whole house was in pleasant bustle and confusion. Nearly all the presents had arrived by this time. The school children had come up to the Rectory in a body to present Hilda with a very large and gaudily decorated photographic album; the Rectory servants had given the bride-elect a cuckoo-clock; Miss Mills had blushed as she presented her with a birth-day book bound in white vellum; "Carter Patterson's" people were tired of coming up the avenue with box after box; and Aunt Marjorie was tired of counting on her fingers the names of the different friends who were sure to remember such an important event as Hilda Merton's wedding.