the right side. The debate, though instructive, is
interrupted by the sudden entrance of seven women in a group. They are
headed by a truculent old battleship, possibly an aunt or something of
the sort, who fixes the nearest usher with a knowing, suspicious glance,
and motions to him to show her the way.

He offers her his right arm and they start up the center aisle, with the
six other women following in irregular order, and the five other ushers
scattered among the women. The leading usher is tortured damnably by
doubts as to where the party should go. If they are aunts, to which
house do they belong, and on which side are the members of that house to
be seated? What if they are not aunts, but merely neighbors? Or perhaps
an association of former cooks, parlor maids, nurse girls? Or strangers?
The sufferings of the usher are relieved by the battleship, who halts
majestically about twenty feet from the altar, and motions her followers
into a pew to the left. They file in silently and she seats herself next
the aisle. All seven settle back and wriggle for room. It is a tight
fit.

(Who, in point of fact, are these ladies? Don't ask the question! The
ushers never find out. No one ever finds out. They remain a joint
mystery for all time. In the end they become a sort of tradition, and
years hence, when two of the ushers meet, they will cackle over old
dreadnaught and her six cruisers. The bride, grown old and fat, will
tell the tale to her daughter, and then to her granddaughter. It will
grow more and more strange, marvelous, incredible. Variorum versions
will spring up. It will be adapted to other weddings. The dreadnaught
will become an apparition, a witch, the Devil in skirts. And as the
years pass, the date of the episode will be pushed back. By 2017 it will
be dated 1150. By 2475 it will take on a sort of sacred character, and
there will be a footnote referring to it in the latest Revised Version
of the New Testament.)

It is now a quarter to twelve, and of a sudden the vestibule fills with
wedding guests. Nine-tenths of them, perhaps even nineteen-twentieths,
are women, and most of them are beyond thirty-five. Scattered among
them, hanging on to their skirts, are about a dozen little girls--one of
them a youngster of eight or thereabout, with spindle shanks and shining
morning face, entranced by her first wedding. Here and there lurks a
man. Usually he wears a hurried, unwilling, protesting look. He has
been dra