Dora had left Hope as soon as it was settled that she and Dick should be married, and she and her mother, and the others, had been busy for some time getting ready for the wedding. Nellie and Grace were also home, and were as much excited as Dora herself, for they were both to be bridesmaids. The girls had spent several days in New York, shopping, and a dressmaker from the city had been called in to dress the young ladies as befitted the occasion.
Tom was to be Dick's best man, while Sam was to head the ushers at the church—the other ushers being Songbird, Stanley, Fred Garrison, Larry Colby, and Bart Conners. A delegation of students from Brill—including William Philander Tubbs—had also come up, and were quartered at the Cedarville Hotel.
The wedding was to take place at the Cedarville Union Church, a quaint little stone edifice, covered with ivy, which the Stanhopes and the Lanings both attended and which the Rover boys had often visited while they were cadets at Putnam Hall. The interior of the church was a mass of palms, sent up on the boat from Ithaca.
Following the sending out of the invitations to the wedding, presents had come in thick and fast to the Stanhope home. From Dick's father came an elegant silver servdce, and from his
