The twelfth was a beautiful day. Clear, frosty air set the blood to and the eyes to sparkling, even if it were not your wedding day; while if it were—  
It was Marie Hawthorn's wedding day, and certainly her eyes sparkled and her blood as she threw open the window of her room and breathed long and deep of the fresh morning air before going down to breakfast.
 
“They say 'Happy is the bride that the sun shines on,'” she whispered softly to an English sparrow that cocked his eye at her from a neighboring tree branch. “As if a bride wouldn't be happy, sun or no sun,” she tenderly, as she turned to go down-stairs.
 
As it happens, however, tingling blood and sparkling eyes are a matter of more than weather, or even weddings, as was proved a little later when the telephone bell rang.
 
Kate answered the ring.
 
“Hullo, is that you, Kate?” called a despairing voice.
 
“Yes. Good morning, Bertram. Isn't this a fine day for the wedding?”
 
“Fine! Oh, yes, I suppose so, though I must confess I haven't noticed it—and you wouldn't, if you had a lunatic on your hands.”
 
“A lunatic!”
 
“Yes. Maybe you have, though. Is Marie rampaging around the house like a wild creature, and asking ten questions and making twenty threats to the minute?”
 
“Certainly not! Don't be absurd, Bertram. What do you mean?”
 
“See here, Kate, that show comes off at twelve sharp, doesn't it?”
 
“Show, indeed!” retorted Kate, indignantly. “The wedding is at noon sharp—as the best man should know very well.”
 
“All right; then tell Billy, please, to see that it is sharp, or I won't answer for the consequences.”
 
“What do you mean? What is the matter?”
 
“Cyril. He's broken loose at last. I've been expecting it all along. I've simply at the with which he has submitted himself to be tied up with white ribbons and topped with roses.”
 
“Nonsense, Bertram!”
 
“Well, it amounts to that. Anyhow, he thinks it does, and he's wild. I wish you could have heard the thunderous performance on his piano with which he woke me up this morning. Billy says he plays everything—his past, present, and future. All is, if he was playing his future this morning, I pity the girl who's got to live it with him.”
 
“Bertram!”
 
Bertram remorselessly.
 
“Well, I do. But I'll warrant he wasn't playing his future this morning. He was playing his present—the wedding. You see, he's just waked up to the fact that it'll be a perfect orgy of women and other confusion, and he doesn't like it. All the samee,{sic} I've had to assure him just fourteen times this morning that the ring, the , the carriage, the minister's fee, and my are all O. K. When he isn't asking questions he's making threats to snake the parson up there an hour ahead of time and be off with Marie before a soul comes.”
 
“What an absurd idea!”
 
“Cyril doesn't think so. Indeed, Kate, I've had a hard struggle to convince him that the guests wouldn't think it the most experience of their lives if they should come and find the ceremony over with and the bride gone.”
 
“Well, you remind Cyril, please, that there are other people besides himself concerned in this wedding,” observed Kate, icily.
 
“I have,” purred Bertram, “and he says all right, let them have it, then. He's gone now to look up marriages, I believe.”
 
“Proxy marriages, indeed! Come, come, Bertram, I've got something to do this morning besides to stand here listening to your nonsense. See that you and Cyril get here on time—that's all!” And she hung up the receiver with an impatient jerk.
 
She turned to confront the startled eyes of the bride elect.
 
“What is it? Is anything wrong—with Cyril?” Marie.
 
Kate laughed and raised her slightly.
 
“Nothing but a little stage fright, my dear.”
 
“Stage fright!”
 
“Yes. Bertram says he's trying to find some one to play his rôle, I believe, in the ceremony.”
 
“Mrs. Hartwell!”
 
At the look of dismayed terror that came into Marie's face, Mrs. Hartwell laughed .
 
“There, there, dear child, don't look so horror-stricken. There probably never was a man yet who wouldn't have fled from the wedding part of his marriage if he could; and you know how Cyril hates fuss and feathers. The wonder to me is that he's stood it as long as he has. I thought I saw it coming, last night at the rehearsal—and now I know I did.”
 
Marie still looked .
 
“But he never said—I thought—” She stopped helplessly.
 
“Of course he didn't, child. He never said anything but that he loved you, and he never thought anything but that you were going to be his. Men never do—till the wedding day. Then they never think of anything but a place to run,” she finished laughingly, as she began to arrange on a stand the quantity of little white boxes waiting for her.
 
“But if he'd told me—in time, I wouldn't have had a thing—but the minister,” faltered Marie.
 
“And when you think so much of a pretty wedding, too? Nonsense! It isn't good for a man, to give up to his like that!”
 
Marie's cheeks grew a deeper pink. Her a little.
 
“It wouldn't be a 'whim,' Mrs. Hartwell, and I should be glad to give up,” she said with decision.
 
Mrs. Hartwell laughed again, her amused eyes on Marie's face.
 
“Dear me, child! don't you know that if men had their way, they'd—well, if men married men there'd never be such a thing in the world as a shower or a piece of wedding cake!”
 
There was no reply. A little Marie turned and hurried away. A moment later she was laying a restraining hand on Billy, who was filling tall vases with superb long-stemmed roses in the kitchen.
 
“Billy, please,” she panted, “couldn't we do without those? Couldn't we send them to some—some hospital?—and the wedding cake, too, and—”
 
“The wedding cake—to some hospital!”
 
“No, of course not—to the hospital. It would make them sick to eat it, wouldn't it?” That there was no shadow of a smile on Marie's face showed how desperate, indeed, was her state of mind. “I only meant that I didn't want them myself, nor the shower bouquet, nor the rooms darkened, nor little Kate as the flower girl—and would you mind very much if I asked you not to be my maid of honor?”
 
“Marie!”
 
Marie covered her face with her hands then and began to brokenly; so there was nothing for Billy to do but to take her into her arms with little and pettings. By degrees, then, the whole story came out.
 
Billy almost laughed—but she almost cried, too. Then she said:
 
“Dearie, I don't believe Cyril feels or acts half so bad as Bertram and Kate make out, and, anyhow, if he did, it's too late now to—to send the wedding cake to the hospital, or make any other of the little changes you suggest.” Billy's lips into a half-smile, but her eyes were grave. “Besides, there are your music pupils trimming the living-room this minute with , there's little Kate making her flower-girl wreath, and Mrs. Hartwell stacking cake boxes in the hall, to say nothing of Rosa gloating over the best china in the dining-room, and Aunt Hannah putting purple bows into the new lace cap she's counting on wearing. Only think how disappointed they'd all be if I should say: 'Never mind—stop that. Marie's just going to have a minister. No fuss, no feathers!' Why, dearie, even the roses are hanging their heads for grief,” she went on , lifting with gentle fingers one of the full-petalled pink beauties near her. “Besides, there's your—guests.”
 
“Oh, of course, I knew I couldn't—really,” sighed Marie, as she turned to go up-stairs, all the light and joy gone from her face.
 
Billy, once assured that Marie was out of hearing, ran to the telephone.
 
Bertram answered.
 
“Bertram, tell Cyril I want to speak to him, please.”
 
“All............