Hazel had her wish; it came to pass that they also should make a bee-hive.

“And whenever I marry,” Hazel said, “I hope he won’t be building a town of his own to take me to; for I shall have to bring him here.  I’m the last of the line.”

“That will all be taken care of as the rest has been.  There isn’t half as much left for us to manage as we think,” said Desire, putting back into the desk the copy of Uncle Titus’s will which they had been reading over together.  “He knew the executorship into which he gave it.”

Shall I stop here with them until the Easter tide, and finish telling you how it all was?

There is a little bit about Bel Bree and Kate Sencerbox and the Schermans, which belongs somewhat earlier than that,—­in those few pleasant days when March was beguiling us to believe in the more engaging of his double moods, and in the possibility of his behaving sweetly at the end, and going out after all like a lamb.

We can turn back afterwards for that.  I think you would like to hear about the wedding.

Does it never occur to you that this “going back and living up” in a story-book is a sign of a possibility that may be laid by in the divine story-telling, for the things we have to hurry away from, and miss of, now?  It does to me.  I know that That can manage at least as well as mine can.

* * * * *

Christopher Kirkbright and Desire Ledwith were married in the library, where they had betrothed themselves; where Desire had felt all the sacredness of her life laid upon her; where she took up now another trust, that was only an outgrowth and expansion of the first, and for which she laid down nothing of its spirit and intent.

Mrs. Ledwith and the sisters—­Mrs. Megilp and Glossy—­were there, of course.

Mrs. Megilp had said over to herself little imaginary speeches about the homestead and old associations, and “Daisy’s great love and reverence for all that touched the memory of her uncle, to whom she certainly owed everything;” about the journey to New York, and the few days they had to give there to Mr. Oldway’s life-long friend and Desire’s adviser, Mr. Marmaduke Wharne ("Sir Marmaduke he would be, everybody knew, if he had chosen to claim the English title that belonged to him"),—­who was too infirm to come on to the wedding; and the necessity there was for them to go as fast as possible to their estate in the country,—­Hill-hope,—­where Mr. Kirkbright was building “mills and a village and a perfect castle of a house, and a private railroad and heaven knows what,”—­all this to account, indirectly, for the quiet little ordinary ceremony, which of course would otherwise have been at the Church of the Holy Commandments; or at least up-stairs in the long, stately old drawing-room which was hardly ever used.

But none of the people were there to whom any such little speeches had to be made; nobody who needed any accounting to for its oddity was present at Desire Ledwith’s wedding.