"Bring in our daughter Clothed like a bride ... See, where she comes, Appareled like the spring,"-- Mr. Childs quoted, puffing happily--"but that frock you've got on is spring-like, too--all yellow and white, like buttercups and daisies." "I'm rather stuck on it, myself," Fred said, complacently; she was standing beside Arthur Weston, eating ice-cream with appetite. "Well," her uncle said, chuckling, "I may tell you in confidence--Hey, Howard!" he interrupted himself, clutching at the passing bridegroom, "I was just telling Freddy that I was very much astonished when I learned that you were to be my son-in-law. I thought you were making up to her!" "To _me_?" said Fred, incredulously; "he never knew I existed when Laura was around!" "I'm just looking for Laura now," Howard said, with a gasp; "she's deserted me!" he complained, laughing--and escaped. "Oh," Mr. Childs said, clapping his niece on the shoulder so heartily that her ice-cream spilled over, "of course I know, now, that it's always been Laura!" "Yes," Fred agreed, gaily, "he's been dead set for Lolly for the last two years." So she got through with the Day.... When she reached home, and up in her own room took off the yellow hat, she took off that gallant smile, too; she had worn it until the muscles about her lips were stiff. She was profoundly fatigued; too fatigued to feel anything but relief that the wedding was over. Even the old ache of wishing she "hadn't told him" was numbed. It was part of the generosity of her honest, sore young heart, that she felt a faint satisfaction in the fact that, anyhow, _he_ was happy; as for Laura--"how mean I am to--dislike her! It wasn't her fault, and she's just the same old Lolly. I _won't_ dislike her! I'll love her, just as I've always loved her." When she went down to dinner that night she put the smile on again, and was very airy and smart in her comments to Mrs. Payton upon the Childs family, and the company in general. "Laura was perfectly sweet! But Aunt Bessie is too fat to wear such tight clothes. Why do the fat fifties always wear tight clothes?... Grandmother wasn't shy on powder, was she?... Billy-boy would talk about Bacon at his own funeral!... How many kinds of a fool do you suppose that old hag, Maria Spencer, is?... I--I guess I'll go to bed. I was an idiot to eat ice-cream; it always makes my head ache." Perhaps her head ached too badly for sleep. At any rate, hours later, when 15 Payton Street had sunk into midnight darkness, she heard a board creak under a careful step in the hall, and sat up in bed, saying, sharply, "Who's that?" "It's I, dear. Don't be frightened." Mrs. Payton came feeling her way across the room to Fred's bedside. "Is anything the matter? Is Mortimore--" "No, no; nothing! Only, Freddy, my darling, I--I just want to tell you something." She sat down on the edge of the bed, and Frederica heard her draw in her breath in a sob. "Mother! Are you ill?"