was routed from his house and led to the office like a performing
poodle; and there, in the growing dusk, under the cold glitter of
Thirteen Star, two hundred strong, and beside the garish glories of the
agricultural engine, Mamie and Jim were made one. The scene was
incongruous, but the business pretty, whimsical, and affecting; the
typewriters with such kindly faces and fine posies, Madame so demure,
and Jim--how shall I describe that poor, transfigured Jim? He began by
taking the minister aside to the far end of the office. I knew not what
he said, but I have reason to believe he was protesting his unfitness,
for he wept as he said it; and the old minister, himself genuinely
moved, was heard to console and encourage him, and at one time to use
this expression: "I assure you, Mr. Pinkerton, that there are not many
who can say so much"--from which I gathered that my friend had tempered
his self-accusations with at least one legitimate boast. From this
ghostly counselling, Jim turned to me; and though he never got beyond
the explosive utterance of my name and one fierce handgrip, communicated
some of his own emotion, like a charge of electricity, to his best man.
We stood up to the ceremony at last, in a general and kindly
discomposure. Jim was all abroad; and the divine himself betrayed his
sympathy in voice and demeanour, and concluded with a fatherly
allocution, in which he congratulated Mamie (calling her "my dear") upon
the fortune of an excellent husband, and protested he had rarely married
a more interesting couple. At this stage, like a glory descending, there
was handed in, _ex machina,_ the card of Douglas B. Longhurst, with
congratulations and four dozen Perrier-Jouet. A bottle was opened, and
the minister pledged the bride, and the bridesmaids simpered and
tasted, and I made a speech with airy bacchanalianism, glass in hand,
But poor Jim must leave the wine untasted. "Don't touch it," I had found
the opportunity to whisper; "in your state it will make you as drunk as
a fiddler." And Jim had wrung my hand with a "God bless you,
Loudon!--saved me again!"

Hard following upon this, the supper passed off at Frank's with somewhat
tremulous gaiety; and thence, with one-half of the Perrier-Jouet--I
would accept no more--we voyaged in a hack to the _Norah Creina_.

"What a dear little ship!" cried Mamie, as our miniature craft was
pointed out to her; and then, on second thought, she turned to the best
man. "And how