The comic tragedian considered for a moment what he could say most ill-natured and so get himself out of his difficulty.
'I tell you, young lady, I'm not decided, but I think that a copy of Wesley's hymns bound up with the book of the Grand Duchess might not be inappropriate.'
'But how do you think she'll play the Countess?' asked Beaumont.
'Oh, we mustn't speak of that now she's going to be married,' and, thinking he could not better this last remark, Mortimer bade the ladies good-bye and went off with curls and coat-tails alike swinging in the breeze. Farther up the street Beaumont and Dolly were joined by Leslie, Bret, and Dubois, and the same topics were again discussed. 'What are you going to give?' 'Have you bought your present?' 'Have you seen mine?' 'Do you know who's going to be at the wedding breakfast? They can't ask more than a dozen or so.' 'Have you heard that the chorus have clubbed together to buy Dick a chain?' 'It's very good of them, but they'll feel hurt at not being asked to the breakfast.' 'What will the Lennoxes do?' These and a hundred other questions of a similar sort had been asked in the dressing-rooms, in the wings, in the streets at every available moment since Morton and Cox's opéra bouffe company had arrived in Liverpool. Everybody professed to consider the event the happiest and most fortunate that could have happened, but Mortimer's words, 'There's many a slip between the ring and the finger,' recurred to them whenever the conversation came to a pause, and they hoped the marriage might yet be averted, even when they stood one bright summer morning assembled on the stage, awaiting the arrival of the bride and bridegroom. The name of the church had been kept a secret, and all that was known was that Leslie—who had joined another company in Liverpool—Bret, Montgomery, and Beaumont had gone to attend as witnesses, and that they would be back at the theatre at twelve to run through the third act of Olivette before producing it that night.
Many false alarms were given, but when at last the bridal party walked from the wings on to the stage, Dick's appearance provoked a little good-natured laughter, so respectable did he look in a spick-and-span new frock-coat and his tall hat. Kate never looked prettier; Mortimer said her own husband wouldn't know her.
She wore a dark green silk pleated down the front, from underneath which a patent-leather boot peeped as she walked; a short jacket showed the drawing of her shoulders, the delicacy of her waist, and the graceful fall of the hips. She carried in her hand a bouquet of yellow and pink roses, a present from Montgomery.
'Now, ladies and gentlemen, I won't detain you long, but do let us run through the third act, so as to have it right for the night. Montgomery, will you oblige me by playing over that sailor-chorus?'
Dick took the girls in sections and placed them in the positions he desired them to hold.
'Now, then; enter the Countess. Who's in love with the Countess?'
'Well, if you don't know, I don't know who does,' said Mortimer. 'I hear you've been swearing all the morning "till death do us part."'