he had accepted. This last week was,
in truth, an uneasy interval for the whole house. Before Pet, or before
Gowan, Mr Meagles was radiant; but Clennam had more than once found him
alone, with his view of the scales and scoop much blurred, and had often
seen him look after the lovers, in the garden or elsewhere when he was
not seen by them, with the old clouded face on which Gowan had fallen
like a shadow. In the arrangement of the house for the great occasion,
many little reminders of the old travels of the father and mother
and daughter had to be disturbed and passed from hand to hand; and
sometimes, in the midst of these mute witnesses, to the life they had
had together, even Pet herself would yield to lamenting and weeping.
Mrs Meagles, the blithest and busiest of mothers, went about singing
and cheering everybody; but she, honest soul, had her flights into store
rooms, where she would cry until her eyes were red, and would then
come out, attributing that appearance to pickled onions and pepper, and
singing clearer than ever. Mrs Tickit, finding no balsam for a wounded
mind in Buchan's Domestic Medicine, suffered greatly from low spirits,
and from moving recollections of Minnie's infancy. When the latter was
powerful with her, she usually sent up secret messages importing
that she was not in parlour condition as to her attire, and that she
solicited a sight of 'her child' in the kitchen; there, she would bless
her child's face, and bless her child's heart, and hug her child, in a
medley of tears and congratulations, chopping-boards, rolling-pins, and
pie-crust, with the tenderness of an old attached servant, which is a
very pretty tenderness indeed.

But all days come that are to be; and the marriage-day was to be, and it
came; and with it came all the Barnacles who were bidden to the feast.
There was Mr Tite Barnacle, from the Circumlocution Office, and Mews
Street, Grosvenor Square, with the expensive Mrs Tite Barnacle NEE
Stiltstalking, who made the Quarter Days so long in coming, and the
three expensive Miss Tite Barnacles, double-loaded with accomplishments
and ready to go off, and yet not going off with the sharpness of flash
and bang that might have been expected, but rather hanging fire. There
was Barnacle junior, also from the Circumlocution Office, leaving the
Tonnage of the country, which he was somehow supposed to take under
his protection, to look after itself, and, sooth to say, not at all
impairing t