He had
lived alone with his housekeeper almost four years now, and during
nearly all that time he had been waiting for Charlotte.
She was considerably younger than he, and when he had been, after two
years of acquaintance, allowed to betroth himself to her, he had been
asked to wait yet another two years while she should "grow up a little
more," as her wise father put it.
As for Charlotte herself, she still seemed to those who loved her at
home hardly grown up enough at twenty-two to go to a home of her own.
Yet father and mother, brothers and sister, were all ready to
acknowledge that those two years had resulted in the early budding of
very sweet and womanly qualities; and nobody, watching Charlotte with
her lover, could possibly fear for either that they were not ready for
the great experiment.
The autumn leaves were bright, the white fall anemones were in blossom,
when Charlotte's wedding-day came; and with leaves and anemones the
little stone church was decorated.
Not an invitation of the customary sort had been sent out. But, as is
usual in a comfortable, un-aristocratic suburb, the news that Doctor
Churchill and Miss Charlotte Birch wanted everybody who knew and cared
for them to come to the church and see them married had spread until all
understood.
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