"All right. Far be it from me to hasten your matrimonial alliance. I'm only too glad to keep you here. It's lonesome enough, days when you're away." "Nice old Nan!" and Patty gave her a whirlwind hug that nearly took her off her feet. Twenty girls were invited to the shower, and Mona arrived first of all. She came bustling in enveloped in furs, which she unfastened and threw off as she talked. "Everything's going fine!" she announced. "I've attended to the very smallest details myself, so there'll be no mistakes. There always are mistakes and oversights at a wedding and mine is going to be the great exception. My, but I'm tired! I've been chasing about since early this morning. Spent hours with the floral artist, and had a long interview with the caterer. But I confab with him every day. I've changed the menu four times already." "You're a goose, Mona," observed Patty, smiling at her enthusiastic friend, "what do you care what people eat at your wedding, as long as it's good and proper?" "My dear child, I only expect to get married once in my checkered career, and so I want everything connected with the occasion to be perfect. I don't want to look back and regret that I didn't have as much of a symphony in the supper as I did in the orchestra. You don't know the responsibility of a girl who has to get married and look after the wedding both. You'll have Mrs. Nan to run the arrangements, but I haven't anybody but little Mona." The bride-elect looked so radiant and capable and generally happy, that Patty knew better than to waste any sympathy on her. "You love it all, Mona," she said, "you're just in your element ordering decorations and deciding menus; and I suppose you've superintended the hat-check people and the elevator service." "Of course I have. I practically run the whole hotel just at present. The management have to take a back seat where anything connected with the fifteenth is concerned." "It doesn't seem like a wedding at all," laughed Patty. "It is more like a pageant." "It's a wedding, all right. You'll realise it when you see me go off with Roger. Oh, Patty, don't think I don't realise and appreciate the importance and solemnity of the marriage tie, but I do want the appointments to be perfect and beautiful just _because_ it is my wedding to Roger. We're very much in love, you know----" "I do know it, Mona, and it's all beautiful, and I'm glad you're having everything just as you want it. You're an old dear, and nobody wishes you more happiness than I do." "Don't talk in that strain, or I'll weep on your shoulder. I'm all keyed up, you know--honest, Patty, it's pretty awful to have no mother or aunt or anything. Only just a father, who's heavenly kind and generous, but no good for advice or consulting talks." "All right, Mona girl, we won't indulge in real talk now, for the girls will begin to come in a minute. Go and primp a little, and then come down to the drawing-room."