Joan and Archibald were married two weeks later, very quietly, before only her family, resisting all the Major's importunities to make an occasion of it. Nor would the girl accept a trousseau. "If I need any more clothes than I've got already, Archie will buy them for me. Won't you, old boy?" she said, slipping her hand into his. Archie, with the happy consciousness of a rapidly growing business and several years' savings in a Building Association replied proudly that he would. One comment she had missed on her engagement; Stefan Nikolai's. She had written to him at once (her first letter since his post-card advising a preliminary course in matrimony), saying in effect, "Now I hope you're satisfied!" But as no reply came, she reached the correct conclusion that he was on the wing again, with her letter following him from address to address, unread. Ten minutes after the little ceremony that left her no longer Joan Darcy, a cablegram was brought to her from London. "Wait. Coming. Nikolai." To which she replied with reckless extravagance: "Too late. Sorry. Come anyway...." Alone at last with her husband in a carriage (to which the negro yard-boy, feeling with the Major that something was lacking to the occasion, had generously attached one of his own shoes), Joan asked rather listlessly where he meant to take her. She had a conviction that it would be to Atlantic City, or to Niagara Falls. For Archie was everything that was most correct in the way of bridegrooms. His bulldog toes, his padded blue serge, his near-Panama hat, his very socks, were so palpably bought for the occasion that Joan felt that to match him she ought to be wearing dove-gray and a shrinking manner. But she did not feel particularly shrinking; merely relieved that the die was cast, and tired enough to be glad of the arm that stole tentatively around her. "What train are we catching, dear?" she asked. "No train at all.--Oh, Joan," he said tremulously, "I hope you won't mind! It's just for to-night--just a foolish idea of mine." "What is?" "Wait and see!" She waited rather apprehensively. She was a little nervous about surprises, since her father's recent effort in that line. But the carriage was traversing a street she knew well, and it presently stopped in front of the house where Ellen lived. There was still a tinge of afterglow reflected in its many-paned windows, and among the young feathery leafage of the old sycamore sparrows were preparing to go to bed. Two or three of the denizens of the lower floors were taking a breath of air on the doorstep. They stared at the carriage with interest. "None of 'em know about us yet," reassured Archie in a whisper. "Just bluff it out." Aloud he said to one of them (it was the lady who expertly curled feathers): "Do you know whether Mrs. Neal is in, Mrs. Higgs? We've come to see her."