stinct stir of excitement as they entered,
for it was evidently a bridal party. They were all Hungarians, and on
their way to Port Willis for the ceremony. There were the prospective
bride and groom and several friends of both sexes. They settled
themselves in the car, the girls huddled close together, the young
men by themselves. The bride was quite evident from the bridal
whiteness of her hat, a pitiful cheap affair bedecked with thin white
ribbon and a forlorn white plume; but although the bridegroom was as
unmistakable, it was difficult to tell how. Carroll decided that it
was because of the intensified melancholy and abjectness and shame of
his expression. Not one of the young men, who numbered as many as the
girls, but had it. They were all ignoble, contemptible, their faces
above their paper collars and hideous ties stained with miserable
imaginations. There was not a self-respecting face among them; but
the girls were better. There was in their faces an innocent gayety
like children. Instead of the painful, restrained grins of the young
men, they giggled artlessly when their eyes met. They were innocently
conscious of their flimsy and gaudy dresses of the cheapest lawn or
muslin on that cold day, with a multitude of frills of cheap lace and
bows of cheap ribbon, with bare hands adorned with blue or red stoned
rings protruding from their poor jacket-sleeves. The bride, afraid of
crushing her finery, had nothing over her shoulders in her thin white
muslin except one of the gay Hungarian kerchiefs. It was of an
exceedingly brilliant green color, a green greener than the grass of
spring. Above it her homely, downcast face showed beneath the
flapping white hat, which had a cluster of blue roses under the brim
next the dark streaks of her coarse hair. The face of the bride was
simple and rude in contour and line, the face of a peasant from a
long line of peasants, and it was complex with the simple complexity
of the simplest and most primal emotions, with love and joy and
wonder, the half-fearful triumph of swift inertia, attained at last
in the full element of life. The others were different; they were
dimpling and laughing and jesting in their unintelligible guttural.
Their faces knew nothing of the seriousness of the bride's. One of
them was exceedingly pretty, with a beauty unusual in her race. Her
high cheek-bones were covered with the softest rosy flesh, her wide
mouth was outlined by curves. She wore her cheap m