A good deal of walking through the blossoming fields brought us at last on to a good broad highway, and a little later having climbed up a hill, we saw from the top of it the thing we were seeking. A village nestled below, and very properly the tallest roof among the collection that clustered there together, and by far the most imposing object of them all, was a sweet little country church, grey with age, surrounded by a low stone wall whose crannies were filled with moss. Approaching it we were overjoyed to find that a pretty little parsonage stood beside it, which in every particular matched the quaint and venerable appearance of the church itself. But no sooner had we come to the latticed gate of the parson's house than our pleasure fled suddenly away. We had been bold enough in the contemplation of the deed, and had even been disposed to treat it airily. Yet when our fingers fell on the parson's latch, we were suddenly confronted with its magnitude. We were going to be married!
Now although I had started from town not twelve hours before as cynical and desperate a character as any to be found, the humane influences that had been brought to bear upon me, even in that short period, had not been without their effect. I began to see things in their true relation once again, and even to be sensible of feelings I had so long outlived that I almost forgot that I had ever known them. For instance, the emotion of timidity that overtook me at the parson's gate, I could have sworn I had never met with before in my life. The uncomfortable sense of the bashful business to follow caused me to falter with my hand still at the latch, and to parley with Cynthia.
"I think you had better go first, my prettiness," says I seductively, "I don't doubt that you will make a better hand of it than I, and you will have a better knowledge of how to talk to the parson. I am so devilish unused to talking to parsons, d'ye see."
"Oh, yes, I quite see that," says Cynthia significantly, "and I also see that you are afraid."
"I dare say you might have shot wider of the truth," says I. "It is the first time I have been called on to smell this kind of powder, and burn me! if ever I want to be called on again."
"I hope you won't be," says Cynthia.
She herself, I must confess, was as cool as a cucumber. Her colour was a little high perhaps, and the animation in her eyes was, I think, more than usually fine. But take her altogether, she seemed to have all the calmness and assurance of an old campaigner, whilst I was wincing and starting like a raw recruit. They say that all women are alike in this. They go to church as complacently as they go to Ranelagh, and take as keen an enjoyment from the reading of the marriage service as they do in the performance of the Italian dancers at the theatre in Covent Garden. And it is said again that never a man of us all, whatever his years, disposition and ideas, comes to this ceremony but what he is beset with those same qualms that fastened upon me so unexpectedly at the parson's gate.
When we walked up the pretty garden and came to the door of the parson's house, it was Cynthia who unhesitatingly knocked upon it. But the operation had to be repeated ere it was replied to. And when at last the door was drawn back from within we were confronted by a stout, red-faced woman in a gown of printed calico. Her sleeves were rolled up above the elbow, her cap and apron were awry, and there was a look of industrious ill-temper about her that contributed nothing to our encouragement. She stuck her hands on her hips, filled the whole of the doorway with her defiant presence, very like the dragon in the fable that barred the way to the princess in the enchanted palace, and surveyed us in a grimly critical fashion from top to toe.
"Is the parson at home?" says the audacious Cynthia.
"He be!" says the woman in a loud, harsh voice.