"'Go bid the Princess in the tower Forget all thought of sorrow. Her true love will return to her With joy on some glad morrow.'
"Then he bent over her and said still lower, 'By _my_ calendar it's the glad morrow _now_, Princess.'
"He went on just like he was in the play, you know. I suppose they have rehearsed it so much that it is sort of second nature for them to talk in that old-time way, like kings and queens used to do."
"Maybe," answered Phil. "Then what did _she_ say?" he demanded, frowning.
"I don't know. She walked off toward the house with him, and that's the last I saw of them. Why, what's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing!" he replied, with a shrug of his shoulders. "Nothing's the matter, little Vicar. _Let us keep inflexible, and fortune will at last change in our favor._"
"Now whatever did he mean by that!" exclaimed Mary, as she watched him walk away. It puzzled her all the rest of the evening that he should have met her question with the family motto.
A rainy day followed the lawn fête, such a steady pour that little rivers ran down the window-panes, and the porches had to be abandoned. But nobody lamented the fact that they were driven indoors. Rob and Joyce began a game of chess in the library. Lloyd and Phil turned over the music in the cabinet until they found a pile of duets which they both knew, and began to try them, first to the accompaniment of the piano, then the harp.
Mary, sitting in the hall where she could see both the chess-players and the singers, waited in a state of bliss to be summoned to the sewing-room. Only that morning it had been discovered that there was enough pink chiffon left, after the bridesmaids' gowns were completed, to make her a dress, and the seamstress was at work upon it now. So it was a gay, rose-colored world to Mary this morning, despite the leaden skies and pouring rain outside. Not only was she to have a dress, the material for which had actually been brought from Paris, but she was to have little pink satin slippers like the bridesmaids, and she was to have a proud place in the wedding itself. When the bridal party came down the stairs, it was to be her privilege to swing wide the gate of roses for them to pass through.