Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/282

 She was smiling. Some intuition had told her that her favorite son had done very well by himself.

He had. Miss Hepwing, to whom he had been quietly married three days before, was a well-born New York girl, all of whose relatives were rich and most of whom were dead. The dead included her parents. There had been nobody to save her from James, and he had managed to make her love him almost at once.

Edward stood in a corner unobserved while Dear Mother "made over" the newly married pair.

"A mother," she cried, "can never have enough daughters . . . How beautiful you are, my dear! How proud I am to have such a beautiful daughter . . ."

"How about Alice?" thought Edward.

At this moment the handsome roving eye of James detected him.

"Eddie!" shouted James. "Dear old Eddie. Ellen, this is Edward—the old rascal—the young prodigal. Come forward, Edward, and kiss your new sister!"

Edward came forward. The sweetness of her face and the honesty and candor of her eyes thrilled him.

"What a perfectly lovely new sister you are," he said, and he kissed her. From that moment to this day he has felt that his sister-in-law is much