nest
meditation. A worse bird than Jacky does not hop. His life is one long
course of larceny, and I know that if he had the gift of speech, he
would also be a consummate liar. I kneel on the walk, and, holding out a
bit of cake, call him softly and clearly, "Jacky! Jacky!" He snatches it
rudely, with a short hoarse caw, puts one black foot on it, and begins
to peck.

"Jacky! Jacky!" say I, sorrowfully, "I am going to be married! Oh, you
know that? You may thank your stars that you are not."

As I speak, my tears fall on his sleek black wings and his dear gray
head. I try to kiss him; but he makes such a spiteful peck at my nose,
that I have to give up the idea. Thus one of my good-byes is over. By
the time that they are all ended, and we have returned to the house, I
am drowned in tears, and my appearance for the day is irretrievably
damaged. My nose is certainly _very_ red. It surprises even myself, who
have known its capabilities of old. Bobby, always prosaic, suggests that
I shall hold it in the steam of boiling water, to reduce the
inflammation. But I have not the heart to try this remedy. It may be sky
blue, for all I care. Nose or no nose, I am dressed now.

Instead of the costly artificial wreath that Madame Elise sent me,
Barbara has made a little natural garland of my own flowers--my Nancies.
I smell them all the time that I am being married. I have no female
friends--Barbara has always been friend enough for me--so I have
stipulated that I shall have no other bridesmaids but her and Tou Tou.
They are not much to brag of in the way of a match. Algy indeed
suggested that in order to bring them into greater harmony, Tou Tou
shall clothe her thin legs with long petticoats, or Barbara abridge her
garments to Tou Tou's length; but the proposition has met with as little
favor in the family's eyes as did Squire Thornhill's proposal, that
every gentleman should sit on a lady's lap, in the Vicar of Wakefield.

The guests are all off to the church. I follow with my parents. Mother
is inclined to cry, until snubbed and withered into dry-eyedness by her
consort. He is, however, all benignity to me. I catch myself wondering
whether I _can_ be his own daughter; whether I am not one of the train
of neighboring misses who have sometimes made me the depository of their
raptures about him.

We reach the church. I am walking up the aisle on red cloth: the
wedding-hymn is in my ears, gayly and briskly sung, though it _is_ a