Frances was not anxious to return to California; she suggested a suburb of New York, in quite another direction from Brownsville Landing, and Mr. Petersen consented. She found a charming house there, the sort of house she had dreamed long ago of having with Lionel, a dignified, cheerful place with a fine garden. She had quite a bit of money saved, and she insisted upon using some of it to equip the place. “Please don’t be proud!” she entreated Mr. Petersen, laughing. “Do let me have my own way about all this. I’ve always longed to furnish a house.” This touched him. The poor defrauded girl! So he left it all to her. She had a wonderful time over it, particularly with the children’s rooms. She was wilfully extravagant there. She had a nursery for little Robert, very scientific and expensive, with a bathroom off it, glitteringly white. Then a big, bright playroom, with little white-painted chairs and tables gay with painted birds and animals, with low shelves for toys, and not a sharp corner anywhere about; and next to this, an exquisite nest for Sandra, all white willow and blue chintz. She spent days and days in the house, with Mrs. Hansen to help her. She would come back to Brownsville Landing--a five hours’ journey--very tired, but filled with enthusiasm. Mr. Petersen went out once or twice and found it charming. He planted a garden there, fruit trees and rose bushes, and had a stable built for his beloved horse. When at last the house was ready there was nothing else to wait for. They went, one gay, cool morning in September, to the City Hall in New York, got their license, and were married by a peevish alderman. They were both curiously devoid of emotion. It was, after all, a matter of little importance to them. They would go on as they had been going for the last months. Nevertheless, they considered it the polite and the correct thing to celebrate in some sort of way. So they went to a hotel, where Mr. Petersen ordered an elaborate lunch. He was just a little ill-at-ease, not being a frequenter of hotels, and the lunch was too heavy, too prolonged. Frankie conscientiously ate all she could, and praised everything. But no use denying that her heart ached! She caught a glimpse of themselves in a mirror, saw her own proud distinction so incongruously escorted by Mr. Petersen’s enormous Socialistic bulk, and how could she help thinking of how Lionel had looked under similar circumstances, how help remembering _his_ ways of ordering lunches ...? Perhaps Mr. Petersen was rather heavy-hearted too, with memories of his other wedding--or what he had imagined at the time to be a wedding. Who knows but that for him there had been infinite romance in his dowdy Minnie?