Suppose I should faint on the way?
I was equal to it, for I took a long nap on the sofa in Mrs.
Splinter's parlor through the soft spring twilight, while Bessie held
what seemed to me interminable conferences with Mary Jane.
It was not a brilliant ceremony so far as the groom was concerned. As
we stood at the chancel-rail I am afraid that the congregation,
largely augmented, by this time, by late-comers--for the doctor had
spread the news through the village far and wide--thought me but a
very pale and quiet bridegroom.
But the bride's beauty made amends for all. Just the same soft white
dress of the afternoon--or was it one like it?--with no ornaments, no
bridal veil. I have always pitied men who have to plight their troth
to a moving mass of lace and tulle, weighed down with orange-blossoms
massive as lead. This was my own little wife as she would walk by my
side through life, dressed as she might be the next day and always.
But the next day it was the tartan cloak that she wore, by special
request, as we climbed the hill to the Ledge. It was spring
indeed--bluebirds in the air, and all the sky shone clear and warm.
"Let _me_ begin," said my wife as she took her old seat under the
sheltering pine. "You can't have anything to say, Charlie, in
comparison with me."
There was a short preliminary pause, and then she began.
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