"Poor Bet! she does love me very much; but, dear Goody, I don't love her as I love you. When Jack comes home, I shall tell him how kind you have been to me, and we shall be so happy; only I expect Jack will be vexed to see me lying here, instead of running out to meet him."
Mrs. Harrison could only turn away her head to hide her tears as Joy went on:
"Uncle Bobo said the other day, when he came up and found me crying, just a little bit, 'Why, I shall have to call you little Miss Sorrowful!' And then he seemed choked, and bustled away. I made up my mind then I would try to smile always when he came. I should not like him to call me little Miss Sorrowful, it seems to hurt him so. And then he always says he ought to have snatched hold of me when the horse came galloping after us, and that he ought to have been knocked down, not me. But that is quite a mistake. Uncle Bobo is wanted in the shop, and I don't think I could have done instead of him; and then it would have been worse for him to bear the pain than it is for me; for when he had the gout in his toe, he did shout out, and threw the things about when Susan went to bathe it. So it is best as it is," was little Miss Joy's conclusion; "isn't it Goody?"
The wedding came off the next day, and the row was greatly excited by the event.
Miss Pinckney was dressed in a cream-coloured cashmere, trimmed with lace, and she wore an apology for a bonnet, with orange blossoms, and a large square of tulle thrown over it.
Susan, who reported the appearance of the wedding party, which she watched leaning out of Joy's window, exclaimed:
"All in white, or next to white! Deary me! If I was fifty, and had a yellow skin, I wouldn't dress like a young girl. There she goes mincing down the row, and there's a coach waiting at the end with white horses. And there goes Mrs. Skinner looking like a lamp-post, dressed in a grey alpaca; she looks as grim as ever. And there's poor Bet—well, to be sure, what a frock and bonnet! They belonged to her mother, let alone her grandmother, or p'r'aps to that pretty daughter of hers, who ran off—she was that ill-treated by her mother she couldn't bear it! Ah! they are a queer lot, those Skinners; they do say Joe Skinner is a queer customer, and that he is so hard up, that's why he's married that old lady. He will make her money spin, and there won't be much left at the end of a year. Serve her right. I've no patience with folks making themselves ridiklous at her time of life. Why, my dear!" Susan said, growing confidential, as she drew her head in from the window, when the little following of girls and boys who lived in the row had returned from seeing the last of Miss Pinckney—"Why, my dear! I could have married, last fall, the lamplighter who has looked after the lamps in the row for years. But I knew better. I told him I was forty-eight, and he was scarce thirty-eight, and I was not going to make myself a laughing-stock. And he went and married a young girl, and has made a good husband. So that's all right!"
It was the same afternoon that Mrs. Harrison, being installed in her sister's place at the shop, Bet came breathlessly up the narrow stairs to say—
"Grandmother wants to see you."
"Oh! I'd rather not, please. I feel so afraid of your grandmother. Don't, please don't let her come."