"Now we will go," Auntie May said.

She opened the garden gate, and we passed out, very demurely.

It was seldom that I went into the big world; but when I did I enjoyed it so! The parasols cast a pleasant shade, and I had a big five-cent piece in my right hand that meant church, and another clutched tightly in my left that meant Sunday school. There were other family parties to be met on the street, elderly ladies carrying Bibles, and little girls and boys walking with careful precision, and down near where the big bell boomed there was another church which commenced after ours did where Burton Raymond played the violin. I could not remember when I had not known Burton Raymond and his violin, for they were one person.

"When Burton Raymond goes to bed," I had heard my mother say, "he always puts the violin to bed, too."

"In a bed, mother?" I demanded.

"No. In a box by his bed, wrapped in his pocket handkerchief, poor fellow."

It was after this time that Auntie May embroidered an oddly shaped velvet mat quite secretly. It had forget-me-nots on it, and when it was finished she tied it up in a beautiful white paper, and slipped it in the mail box down at the corner. And, once, months afterwards, when Burton Raymond played one evening at our house, he put his violin to bed in a velvet jacket just like the one which Auntie May had made.

We were great friends. When we met down by the church steps he would call to me, cheerfully.

"Good-morning, Rhoda."

"There he is, Auntie May!" I would cry. "Don't you see him? Look, Auntie May!"

Somehow, or other, although he never called to her, I always wanted her to see him, too.

He looked very pleasant in the bright sunshine. His hair was nicely brushed, and his shoes were blacked. There was a patch on his right elbow; but you could not see it unless you looked closely. There was something noble in the way in which he carried his dark head. Somebody, perhaps it was Norah, had told me that one of his ancestors had been a great lord, back in the days when the lords were crusaders, and I liked to think of Burton Raymond in chain armor killing people, recklessly. Little Dick and I used to act it out sometimes in the dark end of the hall. We killed a number of things there, Saracens, and lions, and tigers, and the rocking-horse, and little Trixie, and would come in quite breathless afterwards to the sitting room where the family sat in the lamplight. Sometimes we found them talking about Burton Raymond.

"Every time that I walk down our block I seem to meet Burton Raymond," my father grumbled, one evening. "It's getting to be a nuisance. Especially since May has been visiting here," he added, after a serious moment's pause.

"He passed the house fifteen times to-day," my mother said, quietly.

She said it with a blush, and then, suddenly, she made an impulsive dive at my father's hand and squeezed it.

"We were young ourselves once!" she cried.

"The lad hasn't a cent to bless himself with," grandmother demurred.

"But he has genius!" my mother cried again. "There is a great future opening before him. And when we were married we had very little, Robert. There was just one small twenty-five cent piece left after the wedding trip. Do you remember, Robert? And you spent it in flowers—for me! They were roses. I have some of them dried yet."

My mother's voice had sunk lower and lower, falling almost into a whisper, as it always did when she was greatly moved. Sometimes I used to fancy that my mother was not so clever as my father. He could add up sums for you, and tell you about the presidents, and who were the greatest generals in the world; but my mother knew quite different things, the kind that stay with you forever. To her life was a poem and a dream. She was her happiest when she could help somebody, so that for any one to be poor, and very unfortunate, was an open sesame to her heart.

I heard a good deal about Burton Raymond that night, and when I went to bed I asked a sudden question, staring with wide open eyes at my mother over the white coverlet.

"Mother, how poor is Burton Raymond?"

She was taking away the light; but she came back again.

"He is so poor," she said, dramatically, "that he lives in a garret room at Widow Denton's. It is quite a cold room, without a fire, and the bed is not soft like yours, Rhoda. He has a few books on the end of the shelf by his violin box. He plays whenever he can get a chance. Sometimes, perhaps, he is hungry! Yes, sometimes he is hungry!"

I shivered.

"But it's no sin to be poor, is it, mother?" I demanded, anxiously. "We can love people who are poor?"

She put down the light on the bureau before she answered me.

"Money never bought the real things of life," she said, slowly. "To be good and true is the greatest of all. It is sincerity that counts. And when we see some one very noble, and very poor, we must help them, and love them always. Yes, love them always!"

She gave me a sudden kiss, and took the lamp away.

I lay staring into the dark. I could see that garret room, and the violin on the shelf, almost I could see Burton Raymond walking around, very cold and poor, perhaps; but so lovable, yes, so lovable, that poverty seemed the very highest distinction. I made up a long story about him all by myself. He had a great fortune left him, and grew into a lord again, and married Auntie May long before I went to sleep.

But there was another side to the picture.

"It's the cheek that himself has to be coming after our young lady," Norah declared. "A lad out of a butter and eggs shop! Is it fitting for the likes of him to lift his eyes to her?"

"Who, Norah?" I asked, breathlessly.

She was washing clothes with her sleeves rolled to the elbow. First her hands went down into the water with a rush, and then they came up again, and she rubbed something white on a board, amid a snowy froth of suds that was good to look upon. Norah was an authority on washing, and she was, also, an authority on love. Sometimes she would toss back the stray locks from her face, and sing as she scrubbed with a naÏve abandon that would bring grandmother to the scene in a hurry:

Norah sang at the top of her strong voice accenting each line with great enjoyment.

The last phrase was coaxing in the extreme, and I might have been properly impressed if I had not known that Norah was quite old, twenty-five almost, and that down in the very bottom of her trunk there was the picture of a wild Irish lad whom she had loved and left in the old country. Sometimes I used to dream that he would come to America, too, and get rich notwithstanding his wildness, and find Norah out, and, just suppose, he might make a great lady out of her! Life was full of such glorious possibilities in those days!

But to go back to the story.

"Why it's Burton Raymond," Norah explained, in disconnected jerks. "And his uncle keeps the shop. A small, dark shop with eggs in the window. And there's mice under the counter, the freshest mice that I've iver seen. It's like household pets that they be! And Burton waits on the customers. And at night he fiddles to himself. But there's no money in fiddling. Sure I knew a lad in Ireland wance that fiddled for tuppence a night. And he died of starvation, and wint to glory, rest be to his sowl."

She stopped to hold up a small wet garment with indignant hands.

"How did you iver git them black stains?" she demanded.

"I don't know, Norah," I answered, meekly.

After that I was divided in spirit about Burton Raymond. There was the part of me that gloried in the crusader, and even found something romantic in starvation, and the other part that winced at the butter and eggs shop.

The lovers were very pretty to watch. Burton Raymond went up and down our street a great many times every day, and Auntie May always seemed to be out in the garden looking at the flowers. She was growing tall herself, like one of the plants. All her soft hair was gathered upon the top of her head, and she never ran about as she used to do. She had forgotten how to be a little girl. She changed her dress a great many times a day, and she bought a band of velvet ribbon to wear around her throat, and sometimes she would catch me in a dark corner, and hug me, rapturously.

"The saints preserve me from iver being in love!" Norah cried, shaking her head. "What will the owld gintlemin say? And the owld lady?"

The old gentleman was my granddad Lawrence, who lived around the corner in a big house that outshone ours as the sun does the moon. There were more flowers there and more trees, and a fat horse in the stable that drew a little dog-cart about the streets of our town, and best of all there was a fountain in the garden, where two little iron boys stood under an iron umbrella, and watched the birds that came to take their baths in the pool at their feet. Just now, however, the house was all closed up, granddad and grandmother were away, the fountain in the garden was quite choked and dusty, and the birds had found another place to bathe.

Grandmother Lawrence was my worldly grandmother, and when she was at home we tried to live in as good style as possible that she might be pleased with us. Always it had been a sorrow to her that my mother had married a poor man, and she was quite resolved that no such catastrophe should happen to Auntie May.

"I would rather see May dead," I have heard her declare dramatically, "yes, dead at my feet, than married to a poor man!"

She never said this when my father was around; but he knew as well as the rest of us that Auntie May was destined for great things.

She was so pretty, Auntie May was. Sometimes she let me stay in her room when she did her hair before the glass, and I would handle its soft lengths fondly.

"Auntie May," I asked once, peeping over her shoulder into the mirror, "may I be your bridesmaid?"

First she flushed up and laughed, and then she leaned back in the chair, and gazed at me, wretchedly.

"Rhoda," she said, "I am the most miserable girl in the whole world!"

That was the day that grandmother and granddad Lawrence came home, and there was a stir all through their big house and our little one, and Auntie May was back in her own room, surrounded by all the pretty things that were particularly hers. She looked around it, consideringly. There were roses on the carpet, and roses on the big arm-chairs, and roses climbed up the walls and fell in festoons about the ceiling. There was a white fur rug in front of the fire-place, and a silver glitter on the bureau. Auntie May looked at it all in quite a discontented fashion.

"I like things plainer," she said, plaintively.

Her lip trembled.

"I'd like a garret—and bare floors—and music!" she cried.

"What is that about music?" grandmother Lawrence questioned, coming in the door.

She had a string of pearls in her hand, and she fastened it around Auntie May's throat as she spoke. It was a present brought from abroad.

"There, child," she said, not unkindly, "wear your pearls and be happy, and don't let us have any more of this nonsense."

"Nonsense!" Auntie May exclaimed.

"Yes, nonsense," grandmother Lawrence repeated, coldly.

Auntie May's eyes flashed.

"Do you think you can pay me to give him up?" she asked, in growing indignation. "Do you think that I care about pearls? Do you think that I care about anything—but just him?"

She had risen to her feet, and was confronting grandmother.

"Let me be happy in my own way," she pleaded, with soft appeal. "Mother, let me be happy!"

I thought that for just a moment grandmother weakened; but it was only for a moment.

"Happy with a beggar!" she retorted. "Never!"

The pearls went down on the floor in a sudden shower.

"Then I'll never be happy in all my life!" Auntie May answered, in a broken voice.

After that it seemed as if there was a heavy cloud over the whole family. We were none of us as cheerful as we used to be, not one, and people spoke in whispers as they do when some one is very sick. And Auntie May cried! She cried until her pretty eyes were red, and all her soft hair was tousled and damp from much mourning. And my mother cried with her. It was a terrible time.

We children had talked the matter over among ourselves, and we all sided with Auntie May. Every night little Dick prayed an extra clause to his long prayer. It came right after the place where he prayed for puppies.

"Please, God, let me have two puppies," he asked, in a loud, decided tone. "One brown one, and one white one with brown spots and a brown tail. And, please, God, bless Auntie May, and send her a new beau."

One night he made another announcement.

"Please, God, you needn't bother about Auntie May's beau. When I grow up I'll marry her myself."

"You shan't!" little Trixie cried, in sudden wrath, from the next crib. "When I grow up I'm going to marry her myself."

She bounced in her bed.

Dick answered her from his knees. He looked like an angel as he knelt there in his nightgown, with his fair curls falling about his flushed face.

"Girls can't marry girls," he explained, scornfully.

"They can!" Trixie screamed.

"They can't!" Dick roared.

He picked up one of his little shoes by the side of the bed, and threw it at Trixie. There was an immediate wail from the next crib. Dick was always a good shot.

"Oh, children, children!" my mother cried, in despair. "Dick, go to sleep this moment. Trixie, Trixie, dear, you are not really hurt."

"But her feelings are, mother," I protested.

I knew that the littlest things hurt just as much as the big.

My mother settled down, disconsolately, in her rocking chair, with a small, weeping burden in her arms, and rocked and sang.

"This is a dreadful family," she said, in between verses. "There is always a fuss."

As for Dick he made one more triumphant discovery before he finally subsided for the night.

"Girls are soft things," he declared, jealously, from his crib. "They are! They are!"

"Dick!" my father called from downstairs, "you stop that!"

Which settled the subject for the time being.

There was just one person in the family who was not upset, and that was my grandmother Harcourt. She read her Bible as usual, and watched us with grave eyes. She watched grandmother Lawrence buying pretty dresses by the dozen for Auntie May, and scolding violently, because they were not worn, and she watched granddad going about, with a perplexed face and a heavy heart, and even my own father laboriously concocting funny stories at which nobody laughed. When grandmother spoke her remarks were oracular.

"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder," she said, with dignity.

And one day when things were at their very worst, and Auntie May had come to our house, "to cry in peace," as she said, grandmother Harcourt laid a small white note in her hand.

"Go out in the garden, dear," she said, impressively. "Behind the lilac bush. Quick!"

Away flew Auntie May, and I after her.

Now behind the lilac bush was my own particular domain. It was where I made my little mudpies in beautiful clam shells, and once I had had a caterpillar colony there, all pretty brown and yellow ones, and some few with neat tufted backs and red whiskers. And Jeremiah John, the wandering turtle, lived there. But no grown-up person ever ventured behind the lilac bush, so it was a surprise to find Burton Raymond, with cobwebs on his coat and a pale face, waiting for us.

"You!" Auntie May cried.

She said it almost in a shriek. She put her arms about him and clung to him.

"You!" she said again, with infinite content.

They didn't appear to mind me in the least, and they nearly killed Jeremiah John, who had gone to sleep in the sun.

Burton Raymond had seemed frightened at first; but when he saw how Auntie May cried and clung to him, his head went up, and his eyes grew dark, and he looked every inch a crusader. They talked together in whispers. He was persuading her to do something.

"Oh, no, no!" she cried.

She looked down at her clothes.

"What! In this dress!" she exclaimed, hotly.

He whispered again, and little by little she stopped shaking her head, and grew a trifle rosy and confused, and, at last, it seemed to me that she said, "yes." It must have been something very terrible to which she had agreed, for she faltered afterwards, and had to be encouraged some more. Then she picked a bunch of the lilacs and pinned it in her belt, and they went on toward the gate together. Her hand was on the latch before she remembered me.

"Oh, there's Rhoda!" she said.

Her eyes questioned mine, anxiously.

"Will you come, too, Rhoda?" she asked.

Somehow I felt that she would be glad to have one of the family with her, so I went.

Of course I knew that it was an elopement. Auntie May was running away, just like a princess in a fairy tale! I knew whole pages and pages of fairy tales, and I had always liked the ones best where the princess ran away; but I had never expected to be in a fairy tale myself. The sun was so bright, and the air was golden with mystery. The gate shut with a soft click. I felt that it would never betray us. It was very exciting afterwards. We turned around a corner, and there was a horse and buggy waiting for us in quite a magical fashion, and in a moment we were in and off.

"Oh, make him go fast, Burton," Auntie May prayed.

She was frightened again.

"Oh, make him go very fast!" she cried.

The houses whisked past us. The people in the streets looked at us, strangely, and one old man, a lifelong friend of my grandfather's, ran out to the curb, and held up his cane, imperatively, for us to stop. On we went, with a clatter and a bounce, right through the town, and out into the quiet country beyond, where there were daisies in the fields, and cows to regard us with astonishment, and dogs to bark as we went along. We were all quite pale by now, I fancy, and wild-eyed. At least the prince and the princess were, and they held hands as if they had been lost and had found each other. And, then, away off in the distance I saw the steeple of a tiny church. It grew taller and taller.

Always when I had thought of being Auntie May's bridesmaid, I had expected to wear a white dress and carry flowers, and walk right down the aisle with all the golden and red and blue ladies in the church windows watching me; but now when the time came I concluded that I liked this new way best of all. The minister was out in his front yard when we drove up, and I thought that he looked at our bridal party rather pityingly. And I also thought that he considered us a joke. We walked up to him trembling, and stood about the bed which he was digging.

"We'd like to be married, sir," Burton announced, awkwardly.

The minister regarded us all through big, benevolent, silver-rimmed spectacles. He left off his digging to smile at us. He had a geranium in one hand, and a shovel in the other.

"I thought you were a christening party," he said.

He pointed his shovel at me.

"Who's that?" he demanded, beaming.

"I'm the bridesmaid," I told him.

Then I felt a sudden confidence in him. I pulled at his sleeve.

"They're running away," I confided, anxiously. "Won't you marry them? If you don't poor Auntie May will never be married at all!"

"We've only got a few moments' start, sir," Burton explained, breathlessly. "There's a carriage after us. Listen!"

Far in the direction of town we could hear the sound of coming wheels. While we listened they seemed to redouble their speed.

"Oh, if you'd please hurry, sir!" Auntie May begged, in a panic. "They'll take me home again! I know they will. Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!"

She looked about with wild eyes as though for somewhere to hide.

The minister himself seemed to catch fire a bit at that, and he did hurry. He had us all in the parsonage parlor in a moment, and went off upstairs calling for "Dora." He was back again immediately in his surplice, with his wife following him, and there, standing before a sunny window, the wilted lilacs still pinned in her belt, Auntie May became Mrs. Burton Raymond.

She looked so pretty! Her eyes were full of tears, and her cheeks were pink. She trembled a little still from agitation. After it was all over she turned to Burton, and held out her hands to him in a frightened way.

"You'll be good to me?" she questioned.

"Good!" Burton cried, with his arms about her.

He looked as if he could dare the whole world in her defense.

"If he isn't he'll have to answer to me," the minister declared, stoutly.

"And to me!" another voice cried, irately, and there was granddad Lawrence stalking, unexpectedly, into the room.

He was very much out of breath, and very angry. I don't believe that I ever saw granddad Lawrence so angry before. For one moment I thought that he was going to shake Burton; but after a bit he calmed down, and we all went home together, the bridal couple in their buggy in advance, and granddad and I behind in the dog-cart. Granddad seemed very sorrowful, and, at last, he unburdened his mind to me.

"This is all very well, Rhoda," he said, in a rueful fashion. "But who's going to break the news to your grandmother!"

He took off his hat, and rumpled up his gray hair until it stood up like quills all over his head.

"Who's going to tell her?" he asked, blankly.

It worried us both all the way home; but the question was settled in quite an unexpected manner, for it was grandmother Harcourt who went to tell grandmother Lawrence. She put on her best black silk, and her lace veil, and her cameo pin, and she held up her head very high in the air as she went out of the front gate.

"I shall tell her a few wholesome truths," she said, determinedly. "I shall speak as woman to woman."

"It is really not so bad after all," my father told my mother. "They talk of a concert tour for the boy, and he comes of a good old family, if it has fallen on evil times."

He paused for a moment, his eyes searching the future.

"And if your father runs for mayor—I don't say that he will, but if he should be persuaded to run—why, that story would bring him in a great many votes. It's so pretty and romantic. All the world loves a lover you know."

My mother sighed blissfully, and motioned to him to peep in the parlor door.

There in the darkest corner sat Auntie May and Burton Raymond on a sofa together. They sat and looked at each other for hours and hours and hours.