"How often have we assured each other of that?" laughed Rob. "We don't seem at ease about it. But he is, really, very nice, only he doesn't strike me as particularly forceful--and then he isn't, Bartlemy!" "Oh, that's really the whole trouble," mourned Wythie. "Our dear, big Bartlemy! And I was so sure that not a link of the triple alliance would fail!" Rob looked up quickly, but Wythie had not the most remote intention of teasing, so she resumed her creasing with heightened colour, and Wythie hemmed on, lost in thought. The Grey girls went to the commencement, and saw their Battalion B dismissed from their beloved Mother Yale with honours for which all three, each in his way, had worked hard. The last train brought them back to Fayre: Wythie tucked under Basil's father's arm, who seemed hardly less fond of his little almost-daughter than Basil, while Basil looked after Hester; Lester Baldwin devoted himself to Frances, and Rob and Prue fell to Bruce and Bartlemy's share, just as they had always done. "Mother Grey, here are our alumni!" cried Commodore Rutherford, his voice resounding through the stillness of Fayre at midnight as the party came up the flagged walk. "I think it sounds pretty bad to say: 'I am an alumnus,'" said Bartlemy. "Much as I coveted the title it sounds zöological to me." "Dear boys, I congratulate you with all my heart," said Mrs. Grey. "I feel a little of Mr. Peggotty's wonder when he found Davy 'a gentleman growed.'" "I hope you are not struck by finding us gentlemen? We've been tolerably growed ever since you've known us," said Bruce. "It was a delightful day? Not a blemish in it?" asked Cousin Charlotte, who had come up with Polly for the night to pay tribute to the alumni. "It was the most beautiful, faultless day one could imagine," said Hester. Basil began to count on his fingers. "Ten days from to-day I can easily imagine far more beautiful," he said, with a rapturous look at Wythie. "Rhoda has made us chocolate, dear Alumni," said the Grey mother. "And we're going to drink your health from the cup from which Washington pledged the Grey of that day." She did not care to discuss that ten days distant celebration, glad as she was that Wythie was to be so safely happy. It was such a very short time to keep the circle in the little grey house unbroken, and those ten days sped like swallows over the old roof. There had been stirring discussions as to the manner of Oswyth's marrying; only one thing had been settled from the first: Wythie insisted on a perfectly simple wedding, and on being married in her beloved little home.