n. Arabella, hang on to your flowers! It's a perfect shame your
brother ain't with you! For goodness' sake, stand up straight, an'
don't look as if you was goin' to be hung! Go on, Elsie!"

But the bride was clinging desperately to her maid's arm, and refused
to let her go. "I--I can't go, Susan!" she whispered.

"Oh, mercy me! Everything's goin' to be spoiled!" wailed her
sister-in-law.

"Arabella's going to walk out holding my arm," said Elsie firmly,
seeing that the little bride's condition demanded immediate relief.

"Well, go on, then," said Mrs. Winters, with a gesture of despair.
"It'll be a fool of a thing, anyhow. Now, Bella, open the door,
slow--slow!"

The door swung gradually, but when it was half open Mrs. Winters
slammed it again.

"Arabella," she cried, in a panic, "did you shut Polly up?"

The bride stared at her, uncomprehending.

"No, she never, maw," whispered Bella hysterically, "an' she'll be sure
to come right out with them swear-words in the middle of everything."

Once more the bridesmaid met the emergency. "It can't be helped now,"
she said. "Please don't bother her. Open the door, Bella."

The door swung back for the third and last time, and the little blue
figure and the tall white one walked slowly up to where Martin and the
doctor stood before the minister. The distance from the spare bedroom
door to their destination was a matter of about three yards, and Mrs.
Winters had overlooked the fact that it was out of all proportion to
the wedding march. Cousin Martha from Glenoro, in a panic of
nervousness, was laboring hard to get to the end of it, but long after
the bridal party was in position the faint, jerky sounds still wavered
on, now vanishing altogether in a dumb show, now, just as the people
were hopefully thinking the ordeal over, becoming huskily audible.
There seemed enough of the thing, Mrs. Long said afterward, to give
Arabella time to walk over to the next concession to get married.

The minister put on his glasses, took them off, fumbled with his
handkerchief in his coat-tail pocket, and cleared his throat. The
groom shifted from one foot to the other. Over in a corner, behind the
sofa, Davy Munn and the eldest orphan ducked their heads and giggled.
Bella rattled her pink silk nervously; Mrs. Winters frowned at her
husband.

Cousin Martha from Glenoro turned another page, the wedding march took
a new start, and grew stronger; and the blacksmith's small