find about a thousand spots in which to put tacks from which to run strings holding floral chains, sprays, or small lights. So Gadsby, Bill and Julius, with armfuls of string and mouthfuls of tacks, not only put in hours at pounding said tacks, but an occasional vigorous word told that a thumb was substituting! But what man wouldn’t gladly bang his thumb, or bark his shins on a wobbly stool, to aid so charming a girl as Kathlyn? And, on that most romantically important of all days!!
Anyway, that day’s night finally cast its soft shadows on Branton Hills. Night, with its twinkling stars, its lightning-bugs, and its call for girls’ most glorious wraps; and youths’ “swallowtails”, and tall silk hats,—is Cupid’s own; lacking but organ music to turn it into Utopia.
And was Gadsby’s mansion lit up from porch to roof? No. Only that parlor and a room or two upstairs, for wraps, mascarra, a final hair-quirk, a dab of lip-stick; for Kathlyn, against all forms of “vain display,” said:—
“I’m only going to marry a man; not put on a circus for all Branton Hills.”
“All right, darling,” said Gadsby, “you shall marry in a pitch dark room if you wish; for, as you say, a small, parlor affair is just as binding as
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