“But I do. If it hadn't been for you I should never have found him again, and of _course_ I shouldn't have had this dear little home to be married in. And I never could have left mother if she hadn't had Aunt Hannah and the Annex which means you. And if I hadn't found Mr. Arkwright, I might never have known how--how I could go back to my old home (as I am going on my honeymoon trip), and just know that every one of my old friends who shakes hands with me isn't pitying me now, because I'm my father's daughter. And that means you; for you see I never would have known that my father's name was cleared if it hadn't been for you. And--” “Oh, Alice, please, please,” begged Billy, laughingly raising two protesting hands. “Why don't you say that it's to me you owe just breathing, and be done with it?” “Well, I will, then,” avowed Alice, doggedly. “And it's true, too, for, honestly, my dear, I don't believe I would have been breathing to-day, nor mother, either, if you hadn't found us that morning, and taken us out of those awful rooms.” “I? Never! You wouldn't let me take you out,” laughed Billy. “You proud little thing! Maybe _you've_ forgotten how you turned poor Uncle William and me out into the cold, cold world that morning, just because we dared to aspire to your Lowestoft teapot; but I haven't!” “Oh, Billy, please, _don't_,” begged Alice, the painful color staining her face. “If you knew how I've hated myself since for the way I acted that day--and, really, you did take us away from there, you know.” “No, I didn't. I merely found two good tenants for Mr. and Mrs. Delano,” corrected Billy, with a sober face. “Oh, yes, I know all about that,” smiled Alice, affectionately; “and you got mother and me here to keep Aunt Hannah company and teach Tommy Dunn; and you got Aunt Hannah here to keep us company and take care of Tommy Dunn; and you got Tommy Dunn here so Aunt Hannah and we could have somebody to teach and take care of; and, as for the others,--” But Billy put her hands to her ears and fled. The wedding was to be on the fifteenth. From the West Kate wrote that of course it was none of her affairs, particularly as neither of the interested parties was a relation, but still she should think that for a man in Mr. Arkwright's position, nothing but a church wedding would do at all, as, of course, he did, in a way, belong to the public. Alice, however, declared that perhaps he did belong to the public, when he was Don Somebody-or-other in doublet and hose; but when he was just plain Michael Jeremiah Arkwright in a frock coat he was hers, and she did not propose to make a Grand Opera show of her wedding. And as Arkwright, too, very much disapproved of the church-wedding idea, the two were married in the Annex living-room at noon on the fifteenth as originally planned, in spite of Mrs. Kate Hartwell's letter. It was soon after the wedding that Bertram told Billy he wished she would sit for him with Bertram, Jr.