"Sure!" rejoined Bobby with easy nonchalance. "Why not?" "And there'd be flowers and music and lots of people to see us?" "Heaps!" promised Bobby. "Oh-h!" sighed Margaret ecstatically. "And then we'll go traveling 'way over to London and Paris and Egypt and see the Alps." "Huh?" The voice of the prospective young bridegroom sounded a little uncertain. "We'll go traveling to see things, you know," reiterated Margaret. "There's such a lot of things I want to see." "Oh, yes, we'll go travelin'," assured Bobby, promptly, wondering all the while if he could remember just where his mother's geography was. He should have need of it after he got home that night. London, Paris, Egypt, and the Alps--it might be well to look up the way to get there, at all events. "I think maybe now I'll go back," said Margaret, with sudden stiffness. "They might be looking for me. Good-bye." "Oh, I say, Maggie," called Bobby, eagerly, "when folks is engaged they----" But only the swish of white skirts answered him, and there was nothing for him to do but disconsolately to let himself out the side door before any one came and found him. "And I'm going to get married, too," said Margaret to her mother half an hour later. "You're going to get married!" "Yes; to Bobby, you know." The newly-made bride sat down suddenly, and threw a quick look at her husband. "To Bobby!" she exclaimed. "Why, when--where--Bobby wasn't here." "No," smiled Margaret. "He said he wasn't invited, but he came. We fixed it all up a little while ago. We're going to London and Paris and Egypt and see the Alps." CHAPTER XII The great dining-room at Hilcrest, the old Spencer homestead, was perhaps the pleasantest room in the house. The house itself crowned the highest hill that overlooked the town, and its dining-room windows and the veranda without, commanded a view of the river for miles, just where the valley was the greenest and the most beautiful. On the other side of the veranda which ran around three sides of the house, one might see the town with its myriad roofs and tall chimneys; but although these same tall chimneys represented the wealth that made possible the great Spencer estate, yet it was the side of the veranda overlooking the green valley that was the most popular with the family. It was said, to be sure, that old Jacob Spencer, who built the house, and who laid the foundations for the Spencer millions, had preferred the side that overlooked the town; and that he spent long hours gloating over the visible results of his thrift and enterprise. But old Jacob was dead now, and his son's sons reigned instead; and his son's sons, no matter how much they might value the whiz and whir and smoke of the town, preferred, when at rest, to gaze upon green hills and far-reaching meadows. This was, indeed, typical of the Spencer code--the farther away they could get from the oil that made the machinery of life run easily and noiselessly, the better pleased they were.