l for a husband!" said Mrs. Dewy.

"I do hope he'll come in time!" continued the bride-elect, inventing a
new cause of affright, now that the other was demolished.

"'Twould be a thousand pities if he didn't come, now you be so brave,"
said Mrs. Penny.

Grandfather James, having overheard some of these remarks, said
downstairs with mischievous loudness--

"I've known some would-be weddings when the men didn't come."

"They've happened not to come, before now, certainly," said Mr. Penny,
cleaning one of the glasses of his spectacles.

"O, do hear what they are saying downstairs," whispered Fancy. "Hush,
hush!"

She listened.

"They have, haven't they, Geoffrey?" continued grandfather James, as
Geoffrey entered.

"Have what?" said Geoffrey.

"The men have been known not to come."

"That they have," said the keeper.

"Ay; I've knowed times when the wedding had to be put off through his not
appearing, being tired of the woman. And another case I knowed was when
the man was catched in a man-trap crossing Oaker's Wood, and the three
months had run out before he got well, and the banns had to be published
over again."

"How horrible!" said Fancy.

"They only say it on purpose to tease 'ee, my dear," said Mrs. Dewy.

"'Tis quite sad to think what wretched shifts poor maids have been put
to," came again from downstairs. "Ye should hear Clerk Wilkins, my
brother-law, tell his experiences in marrying couples these last thirty
year: sometimes one thing, sometimes another--'tis quite
heart-rending--enough to make your hair stand on end."

"Those things don't happen very often, I know," said Fancy, with
smouldering uneasiness.

"Well, really 'tis time Dick was here," said the tranter.

"Don't keep on at me so, grandfather James and Mr. Dewy, and all you down
there!" Fancy broke out, unable to endure any longer. "I am sure I shall
die, or do something, if you do!"

"Never you hearken to these old chaps, Miss Day!" cried Nat Callcome, the
best man, who had just entered, and threw his voice upward through the
chinks of the floor as the others had done. "'Tis all right; Dick's
coming on like a wild feller; he'll be here in a minute. The hive o'
bees his mother gie'd en for his new garden swarmed jist as he was
starting, and he said, 'I can't afford to lose a stock o' bees; no, that
I can't, though I fain would; and Fancy wouldn't wish it on any account.'
So he jist stopped to ting to 'em and shake 'em."