"'The covert of wings,'" I whispered to myself, as I went down the street to Mrs. Sproul's as rapidly as possible to be rid of my own company. As I repeated the words that the parson had used to Mr. Jeffries I noticed one great white cloud with a dark center flash fire into another, to a great crashing and rumbling. "I wonder if it is really going to storm," I speculated gloomily, as I turned into the Sproul gate, but the brilliant sunshine seemed to fling me a dazzling denial from every petal of the white clematis that wreathed itself across the front porch, under which Mrs. Sproul, arrayed in all the midday magnificence of good form, sat and waited for her guests. Mrs. Cockrell sat beside her and they were delighted to see me and demanded happiness from me which it was hard for me to give from the depths that had been stirred by my strange interview with Martha, to which I felt I ought to have a key, but could not find it anywhere. CHAPTER XVII THE PAGEANT "We were just saying, Charlotte dear, that this absurd school affair has completely overshadowed your wedding day," said Mrs. Cockrell, as she rocked back and forth in tune with her Irish point rose she was constructing. "It seems to me a wedding ought to come before a school festivity." "Social law requires that marriage take precedence of schooling," said Mrs. Sproul, as her mischievous old eyes snapped at Mrs. Cockrell's placid conventionality. "The correct order is for women to take husbands and then school children should be the inevitable outcome. They are not, however, in this day and generation, which is about to be the last, I'm thinking." "There will be thirty-nine kiddies from the Settlement and eleven from the Town to feast on reason and flow soul together in the new school," I laughed, as I sat down between them. "Also I'm thinking that a lot more will be forthcoming from the Settlement by next week. Young Charlotte and Mother Spurlock clothed as far as they could, but they will keep at it, I feel sure. I feel guilty at the idea of taking three trunks of clothes away from the watchful eye of Mother Elsie, only I'm leaving the accumulation of years for her distribution." "The passport to Elsie Spurlock's heart is a condition composed of rags, hunger and unhappiness. She has no sympathy or time for a sanitary and contented friend," said Mrs. Sproul with a decided tartness that was only a reflex of the deep affection she bore the mistress of the Little House, which had existed since childhood and would endure. "I hear some of the cars coming," announced Mrs. Cockrell, as she began to crochet furiously at the last petal of a rose. "Is my cap straight? I do so want to finish this row and can't go in to look."