It took quite a long time to get through at the court-house. The old clerk was indulging in his one and only dissipation of the year, and fully an hour was lost in finding him, and one or two others, and getting the license ready. The Reverend Doctor and his family had already started when Bobbie passed his way again. He stopped for a moment to find out, and then decided to make a short cut for home. The wedding had been fixed for nine o’clock, Sallie Tom declaring it was “monstrous” to talk of “gettin’ up a weddin’ supper in ten minutes,” and they had laughingly agreed to the hour she set. From the time Bobbie left Sallie Tom began bossing the whole affair, and soon everybody in the house was running at her command. Uncle Lias’s rheumatism was pretty bad, but she showed him no mercy, and gave the parlors to him to fix up right. Every stick of wood she knew it was necessary to watch, but this “was Mars’ Bobbie’s weddin’ night, and they should have as much fire as they wanted, if they friz for it the rest of their lives,” she thundered to Uncle Lias, who ventured to remonstrate on her reckless prodigality in heaping up the logs in the great fire-places in the parlors. Peter Black was piling the mantels and pictures with beautiful holly and mistletoe; and between the windows where the ceremony was to take place he had placed the white silken cushions on which his young master’s father and mother had knelt when they were married so many years ago. Fortunately, Anne Carter had come over just after Bobbie left—pretty Anne Carter, Dorothy’s dear friend and almost sister—and under her fingers the rooms began to wear the festive look of other days. The great wax candles sputtered for a moment, and then flared up bravely in the beautiful old silver candlesticks, and soon the rooms were a flood of warm, rich light. Anne surveyed them for a moment, then ran up-stairs to report the progress made to Dorothy. “Sallie Tom is snorting like an old porpoise,” she declared, sitting down for a moment, and fingering almost reverently the beautiful old lace veil lying on the bed, and stroking softly the quaint, old-fashioned wedding gown. “She seems on the eve of spontaneous combustion, but the dining room is a sight to behold! Where in the name of reason she has raked up all those good things to eat will ever be one of the mysteries of life to me. It looks so much like old times,” she went on, still handling the soft, pretty things composing the bridal outfit, “that it makes me positively sick to think of the awful change. You know we’ve been on half rations for months, and how we’re going to hold out is beyond my ken. Sallie Tom always was an uncanny old animal, anyhow, and I believe she’s cunjured those things from the man in the moon; but the very smell has made me disgracefully hungry, and I wish Bobbie would make haste and come, so we can begin on the supper.” Dorothy laughed a little, and looked up at the clock. “He ought to be here now,”