und;
thinking of no other riches, and no prouder home, than they have now in
one another.

Gradually they come into the darker, narrower streets, where the sun,
now yellow, and now red, is seen through the mist, only at street
corners, and in small open spaces where there is a tree, or one of the
innumerable churches, or a paved way and a flight of steps, or a curious
little patch of garden, or a burying-ground, where the few tombs and
tombstones are almost black. Lovingly and trustfully, through all the
narrow yards and alleys and the shady streets, Florence goes, clinging
to his arm, to be his wife.

Her heart beats quicker now, for Walter tells her that their church is
very near. They pass a few great stacks of warehouses, with waggons at
the doors, and busy carmen stopping up the way--but Florence does not
see or hear them--and then the air is quiet, and the day is darkened,
and she is trembling in a church which has a strange smell like a
cellar.

The shabby little old man, ringer of the disappointed bell, is standing
in the porch, and has put his hat in the font--for he is quite at home
there, being sexton. He ushers them into an old brown, panelled, dusty
vestry, like a corner-cupboard with the shelves taken out; where the
wormy registers diffuse a smell like faded snuff, which has set the
tearful Nipper sneezing.

Youthful, and how beautiful, the young bride looks, in this old dusty
place, with no kindred object near her but her husband. There is a
dusty old clerk, who keeps a sort of evaporated news shop underneath an
archway opposite, behind a perfect fortification of posts. There is a
dusty old pew-opener who only keeps herself, and finds that quite enough
to do. There is a dusty old beadle (these are Mr Toots's beadle and
pew-opener of last Sunday), who has something to do with a Worshipful
Company who have got a Hall in the next yard, with a stained-glass
window in it that no mortal ever saw. There are dusty wooden ledges and
cornices poked in and out over the altar, and over the screen and round
the gallery, and over the inscription about what the Master and
Wardens of the Worshipful Company did in one thousand six hundred and
ninety-four. There are dusty old sounding-boards over the pulpit and
reading-desk, looking like lids to be let down on the officiating
ministers in case of their giving offence. There is every possible
provision for the accommodation of dust, except in the churchyard, where
the