The aunts, the uncle and the minister were in the flower-perfumed drawing-room the next morning when Mr. Walcott's letter came. The mother was so far advanced towards health that the doctor had ordered her away from the city.

"We shall collect our children and go to Lake Hopatcong," wrote Mr. Walcott.

"Lake Hopatcong, indeed!" growled the General. "Cedarville will do Edward's wife more good than that breezy place. I shall telegraph Edward to that effect. When do they start?"

"To-morrow," said Miss Celia, to whom all the General's questions were addressed by design. "The children will take your message to the telegraph office."

"An admirable suggestion!" gallantly responded the General. "The longer I live the greater is my amazement that I have ever dreamed of governing myself without the assistance of the feminine mind." He had forgotten Sarah's frequent "assistance!" "My little girl taught me this," he added, thinking that this explanation completely disguised the odor of the implied compliment to Miss Celia.

"Will you not write your telegram at Celia's davenport?" asked Miss Linn.

"With pleasure, madam," responded the General, rising with unnecessary alacrity. To sit at "Celia's davenport" was a privilege for gods—not men!

While he was writing the twins came in.

"Listen, little girl," said the General. "I am going to beg your father and mother, the children, your good aunts, and Mr. Livermore here, and Gay—the rascal! to go back with us to Cedarville; entreat them for me."

"Oh, you will come, won't you?" said May, by way of entreaty.

Much to everybody's surprise, the minister was the first to accept the invitation. Miss Linn declined, but said that Celia might go. Involuntarily the General's eyes sought those of Miss Celia, and in them he fancied he read a desire to go to Cedarville. For an instant—his heart beat so—he could not speak, but finally he said, in a low voice:

"You will favor me with your presence, Miss Celia?"

"Thank you—for a few days—until my sister needs me," said Miss Celia, with a faint blush that the General thought adorable.

"You've forgotten something," said Gay.

"What is it, sir?" demanded the General.

"You haven't invited Uncle George Walcott and Miss Maud Berkeley. They are lovers—and you want two of every kind in your party, like there was in the Ark, don't you?" said Gay.

The General added something to his telegram to Mr. Walcott.

"I have remedied that defect," he said; "have you any further suggestions?"

"Invite the boys and Ethel and Julia to go with us," said Gay; "that would be immense."

"You may invite them," said the General; "you and my little girl."

"Thank you," said Gay, heartily. "It's some fun to have an uncle like you."

"Thank you," said the General, much pleased with this flattery.

"Wouldn't it be a good thing to telegraph to Sarah?" said May, thoughtfully.

"I think it would," the General said, dryly.

Miss Linn left the room when the twins did, leaving the two gentlemen to feast their eyes upon the pretty picture of domesticity made by Miss Celia at her needlework.

On the way to the telegraph office May said:

"The minister likes Aunt Celia almost as well as Uncle Harold does."

"The boys say he's going to marry her," said Gay, coolly.

"Uncle Harold will feel dreadfully! He wants to marry her himself," May asserted, so boldly, that one would have said she was in the General's confidence.

"Then he shall have her," said Gay, with decision, "and we'll help him along; he's an old bachelor, and he won't know what to do."

"He must have read in books. You know in Jane's novel Rudolph de Montmorenci says to Lady Arabella, 'Angel of my life, fly with me!'"

"That wouldn't help Uncle Harold any. Aunt Celia can't fly, and he doesn't look as if he could! No, May; he'll never do it by himself. We must help him."

"I guess anybody as big as Uncle Harold can manage a little woman like Aunt Celia by himself."

"I don't know about that. Aunt Celia is little, but she's 'kinder skittish,' for Margery says so. But it isn't her as much as the minister we've got to look out for. It is my opinion, May, that he is just going to Cedarville to get ahead of Uncle Harold. Oh, you needn't smile! A minister is only a man, and hates to be done out of a thing as much as anybody. But he'll be done out of Aunt Celia—I can tell him that!"

"How? who will do it, Gay?"

"Wait and see!" was the mysterious response.