"Will I stop being an American when I marry you, Sandy?" cried Peaches, showing the first extreme symptoms of excitement which she had evidenced as yet. "Yes. But not for long!" he replied. "I want to come back to this, my mother's country--and stay. And when I am a citizen you'll be one again, you know!" And so it was that it turned out to be a good thing that I had worn my best hat, after all. Because I had never been a bridesmaid before, and the feathers hadn't come out of curl after all. In point of fact the curl stayed in remarkably. I even noticed it after the steamer bearing the bride and groom had sailed and I went to the newspapers to insert the official notice of the wedding. There was a little mirror over the window and I noticed particularly. And when this social duty was done I made Dicky Talbot drive me right to a hotel and sent for Mr. Pegg. I was fearfully afraid, and so was Dicky, bless the dear boy's heart. But he went, as was his duty; and I waited, as was mine. No one can ever say a Talbot was a coward! XVIII It was almost two months later before the traditional bravery of my family was really put to a supreme test, however. All that had gone before--the terrible publicity which followed upon Peaches' elopement, the escape with her husband to foreign shores and his official "pardon," the international complications which this involved and my own public identification with the whole affair--was as nothing to face when compared with the emotion which assailed me upon that late June day when I stood alone upon the threshold of my father's house in Boston, and rang the newly polished door bell. True, I had lived much in the past six and one half years, and might justly consider myself ripe in the experience gleaned therefrom. Without doubt my worldly knowledge was far beyond that of my elder sister, and yet nothing in my entire career caused me to experience such memories or cost me such effort as did the ringing of that bell. Not that there was anything in the least alarming about the aspect of Chestnut Street itself. Quite to the contrary, its neat brick houses with their scoured limestone steps and carefully trimmed window boxes were peculiarly restful to the eye, to the spirit. The sheltering elm trees were in their finest plumage of delicate green, the destroying beetle being still at bay. The feather brick of the sidewalk was warmly colorful and quaint, and a flock of grackles foraged noisily in the gutter. It was indeed a street of peaceful beauty--unchanged after all this stormy interlude of the great war and the first turbulent months of reconstruction. All was as I had left it. Only I was changed.