“Which one, as they stand there now, do you take to be Miss Redmond?” he asked.

“One on the left,” answered Jim promptly.

Aleck gave a signaling whistle which caused both the women quickly to turn.  Agatha was on the right.

Aleck grinned broadly.  “So that Yahoo of a Frenchman wasn’t so stupid after all.”

“I’d like to get my hands on him!” muttered Jim.

“Frenchman or not, there’s going to be a wedding right here in the old red house on Wednesday,” said Aleck.

“Hoopla!  I knew that was it!”

“And then Melanie and I are going to cruise back to New York.  Awfully sorry—­but you’re not invited.”

“You couldn’t get me aboard any gilt-edged yacht that floats!”

At Jimmy’s words—­wholly untrue, by the way—­Aleck’s happy mood suddenly dimmed, as he thought of the dangers and anxieties of the past month.  He turned and laid an arm, boy-fashion, over Jim’s shoulder, pulling his hair as his hand went by.

“You’re a fool of a kid!” he said, choking.

When Jim looked into his cousin’s face, he knew.  “Oh, I say, old man, it wasn’t so bad as all that.”

Aleck stiffened up.  “Who said anything about its being bad?  You’d better get some togs to wear at the wedding.  I’m going to need these clothes myself.”

It turned out, actually enough, that the wedding was to come off on a certain Wednesday in September.

“Would you like New York and a bishop and a big church better than the old red house and the Charlesport minister?” Aleck anxiously asked of Melanie.

“Oh, no,” she protested; and Aleck knew she was sincere.  So they prepared to terminate their holidays by celebrating the wedding in the pine grove.  Melanie spent the intervening days happily with Agatha, or walking with Aleck, or with the delightful group that foregathered in Parson Thayer’s library.  Jimmy made extravagant and highly colored verses to the bride-to-be, to Sallie Kingsbury, and even to himself.  His feet were often lame, but he solemnly assured the company that it was entirely due to circumstances over which he had no control.  A wedding was a wedding, said he, and should have its bard; also its dancers and its minstrels.

“We’ll have all our friends in Ilion, anyway,” said Aleck.  They counted up the list.  Besides the occupants of the house and those from the Hillside, there would be Doctor Thayer, Susan Stoddard and Angie, Big and Little Simon, and the lawyer.

“And they’re all going to dance with the bride,” announced Jim.  “After me.  I’m first choice.”

“A dance led, so to speak, by the elusive Monsieur Chatelard?”

The name alone made Jimmy wroth.  “It’s a dance for which he will pay the fiddler yet!” he prophesied.

“Oh, he’s gone this time.  Scared out of the country for keeps!” was Aleck’s expressed opinion.  But that it might or might not be so, was what they all secretly thought.