s tray, and the smart maid-servant, despatched for porter,
paused to listen. And round the shops where cheap shawls and cottons
tempted the female eye, many a loitering girl detained her impatient
mother, and eyed the tickets and calculated her hard-gained savings for
the Sunday gear. And in the corners of the streets steamed the itinerant
kitchens of the piemen, and rose the sharp cry, "All hot! all hot!" in
the ear of infant and ragged hunger. And amidst them all rolled on some
lazy coach of ancient merchant or withered maiden, unconscious of any
life but that creeping through their own languid veins. And before the
house in which Catherine died, there loitered many stragglers, gossips,
of the hamlet, subscribers to the news-room hard by, to guess, and
speculate, and wonder why, from the church behind, there rose the merry
peal of the marriage-bell!

At length along the broad road leading from the great city, there were
seen rapidly advancing three carriages of a very different fashion from
those familiar to the suburb. On they came; swiftly they whirled round
the angle that conducted to the church; the hoofs of the gay steeds
ringing cheerily on the ground; the white favours of the servants
gleaming in the sun. Happy is the bride the sun shines on! And when the
carriages had thus vanished, the scattered groups melted into one crowd,
and took their way to the church. They stood idling without in the
burial-ground; many of them round the fence that guarded from
their footsteps Catherine's lonely grave. All in nature was glad,
exhilarating, and yet serene; a genial freshness breathed through the
soft air; not a cloud was to be seen in the smiling azure; even the old
dark yews seemed happy in their everlasting verdure. The bell ceased,
and then even the crowd grew silent; and not a sound was heard in that
solemn spot to whose demesnes are consecrated alike the Birth, the
Marriage, and the Death.

At length there came forth from the church door the goodly form of a
rosy beadle. Approaching the groups, he whispered the better-dressed
and commanded the ragged, remonstrated with the old and lifted his cane
against the young; and the result of all was, that the churchyard, not
without many a murmur and expostulation, was cleared, and the crowd fell
back in the space behind the gates of the principal entrance, where they
swayed and gaped and chattered round the carriages, which were to bear
away the bridal party.

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