age-dress, and seeing, also, that we have only
a few pages to finish everything; the list of visitors, the marriage
settlements, the dress, and all included.

It was in vain that Mary endeavoured to repress Lady Arabella's
ardour for grand doings. After all, she was to be married from the
doctor's house, and not from Greshamsbury, and it was the doctor
who should have invited the guests; but, in this matter, he did not
choose to oppose her ladyship's spirit, and she had it all her own
way.

"What can I do?" said he to Mary. "I have been contradicting her in
everything for the last two years. The least we can do is to let her
have her own way now in a trifle like this."

But there was one point on which Mary would let nobody have his or
her own way; on which the way to be taken was very manifestly to be
her own. This was touching the marriage settlements. It must not be
supposed, that if Beatrice were married on a Tuesday, Mary could be
married on the Tuesday week following. Ladies with twelve thousand a
year cannot be disposed of in that way: and bridegrooms who do their
duty by marrying money often have to be kept waiting. It was spring,
the early spring, before Frank was made altogether a happy man.

But a word about the settlements. On this subject the doctor thought
he would have been driven mad. Messrs Slow & Bideawhile, as the
lawyers of the Greshamsbury family--it will be understood that Mr
Gazebee's law business was of quite a different nature, and his
work, as regarded Greshamsbury, was now nearly over--Messrs Slow &
Bideawhile declared that it would never do for them to undertake
alone to draw out the settlements. An heiress, such as Mary, must
have lawyers of her own; half a dozen at least, according to the
apparent opinion of Messrs Slow & Bideawhile. And so the doctor had
to go to other lawyers, and they had again to consult Sir Abraham,
and Mr Snilam on a dozen different heads.

If Frank became tenant in tail, in right of his wife, but under his
father, would he be able to grant leases for more than twenty-one
years? and, if so, to whom would the right of trover belong? As to
flotsam and jetsam--there was a little property, Mr Critic, on the
sea-shore--that was a matter that had to be left unsettled at the
last. Such points as these do take a long time to consider. All
this bewildered the doctor sadly, and Frank himself began to make
accusations that he was to be done out of his wife altogether.

B