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Van Bibber first drove madly to the Little Church Around the Corner, where he told the kind old rector all about it, and arranged to have the church open and the assistant organist in her place, and a district-messenger boy to blow the bellows, punctually at three o’clock. “And now,” he soliloquized, “I must get some names. It doesn’t matter much whether they happen to know the high contracting parties or not, but they must be names that everybody knows. Whoever is in town will be lunching at Delmonico’s, and the men will be at the clubs.” So he first went to the big restaurant, where, as good luck would have it, he found Mrs. “Regy” Van Arnt and Mrs. “Jack” Peabody, and the Misses Brookline, who had run up the Sound for the day on the yacht Minerva of the Boston Yacht Club, and he told them how things were and swore them to secrecy, and told them to bring what men they could pick up.

At the club he pressed four men into service who knew everybody and whom everybody knew, and when they protested that they had not been properly invited and that they only knew the bride and groom by sight, he told them that made no difference, as it was only their names he wanted. Then he sent a messenger boy to get the biggest suit of rooms on the Fall River boat and another one for flowers, and then he put Mrs. “Regy” Van Arnt into a cab and sent her after the bride, and, as best man, he got into another cab and carried off the groom.

“I have acted either as best man or usher forty-two times now,” said Van Bibber, as they drove to the church, “and this is the first time I ever appeared in either capacity in russia-leather shoes and a blue serge yachting suit. But then,” he added, contentedly, “you ought to see the other fellows. One of them is in a striped flannel.”

Mrs. “Regy” and Miss Cambridge wept a great deal on the way up town, but the bride was smiling and happy when she walked up the aisle to meet her prospective husband, who looked exceedingly conscious before the eyes of the men, all of whom he knew by sight or by name, and not one of whom he had ever met before. But they all shook hands after it was over, and the assistant organist played the Wedding March, and one of the club men insisted in pulling a cheerful and jerky peal on the church bell in the absence of the janitor, and then Van Bibber hurled an old shoe and a handful of rice–which he had thoughtfully collected from the chef at the club–after them as they drove off to the boat.

“Now,” said Van Bibber, with a proud sigh of relief and satisfaction, “I will send that to the papers, and when it is printed to-morrow it will read like one of the most orthodox and one of the smartest weddings of the season. And yet I can’t help thinking–“

“Well?” said Mrs. “Regy,” as he paused doubtfully.

“Well, I can’t help thinking,” continued Van Bibber, “of Standish’s older brother racing around Chicago with the thermometer at 102 in the shade. I wish I had only sent him to Jersey City. It just shows,” he added, mournfully, “that when a man is not practised in lying, he should leave it alone.”