Cynthia was so greatly shaken, that to defend her from his observation I was even moved to indulge in the parson's fondness for the dead languages and abstruse theories. However, I had just induced him to quarrel with Cicero on the strength of something that Cicero ought to have said and yet had not said at all, when Blodgett returned, bearing the ring.
That redoubtable lady observed Cynthia's distress at once, but did not put the same construction on it that her master had.
"Very natural to be sure," says she. "Weddings are strange, exciting things, and apt to upset the strongest of us. I remember the first time I went through the ceremony. I was mortal worried by it."
Mrs. Blodgett having by this time fully entered into the affair, took Cynthia in hand. She insisted that Cynthia should go with her upstairs, "to tidy herself like," and be accomplished generally in a manner more befitting the occasion. Indeed so enthusiastic had the housekeeper become about it that she even proposed to search for some of her own discarded nuptial garments, which she ventured to say with a bit of fettling and contriving, a pleat here and a tuck there, Cynthia after all might not lack for a wedding-gown. The conceit of a young lady who a week ago had been of the first fashion, appearing as a bride in a gown that had once done duty for the admirable Blodgett, convulsed me with laughter. And this behaviour was heightened rather than depressed when I recollected that such an attire would consort very aptly with the hobnailed appearance of the bridegroom.
During the absence of the ladies upstairs, the parson had the forethought to give me a two-shilling-bit, for the purpose of feeing the clerk. I was so struck by this further instance of his generous courtesy, that I asked the name of my benefactor, for I swore that I would not rest content until I had repaid him. It seemed that this obscure country clergyman bore the name of Scriven. It is a name as far as I can make out, that has not yet come to any eminence in letters or the humane arts; nor has it attained to any signal preferment in that Church of which it is so true an ornament. His great learning, his simple ingenuous character, his notable generosity, his tenderness of heart, his implicit courtesy have never advanced him one step, so far as I can gather, in the world's opinion. For aught I know he is still the country parson on his forty pounds or so a year, whilst many a sleek old worldling with half of his learning and a tithe of his humanity is my lord Bishop riding by in his gilt coach with footmen behind it, the recipient of a hundred times more kudos and emolument.
When Cynthia came down again she looked wonderfully spic and span. Her hair had been done into a becoming rustic mode, most admirably neat, and showed off its qualities of abundance, gloss and curliness to true advantage. She had not thought fit to call in the aid of Mrs. Blodgett's gown it is true, but her own became her as well as another, and happily at the same time afforded no index to her degree. It was a plain and simple country dress, sober in hue and severe in its style. Yet it fell so exactly into the exquisite lines of her shape, that she and the dress became one as it were; and if there was a woman's tailor who could have exhibited a lovely figure more artfully than that, she must have been good Mrs. Nature herself. Cynthia, for all her country clothes, looked so sweet, arch and dainty too, so much the gentlewoman without the affectations that go with ton and "fine," that by their absence the breeding that lurked in every inch of her, the carriage of her person, slender and small as it was, the set of her head, and the cast of her features became more apparent.
These evidences had even an effect on Mrs. Blodgett. She was mightily pleased with her protégée.
"I don't know who you are, young man," says she, "and I won't say all that's in my mind about you, but I hope you know that you are taking a real born lady to wife. Such white hands I never did see, and such pretty ways, saving her presence, as she 'ave too. You are not a quarter good enough, young man, for the likes of her, and just keep that in your mind and live up to it. But I gravely misdoubt me as to whether you will, for take you all round you are about as disreppitable and low a fellow as ever I saw. To think that such as you should have lured the pretty lamb from her father's house. But as I've told her, it is not yet too late for her to go back again."
Although neither Cynthia nor I was greatly inconvenienced by this crude statement of the case, except in the matter of the smiles we strove in vain to control, the parson, good, honest man, was not a little disconcerted by it.
"Tut, tut!" says he, "my good Blodgett, your tongue runs too fast. However excellent the motives may be that inspire you, I could wish you had a somewhat less direct manner of expressing them. I really cannot have you intervene between plighted lovers, at the very steps of the altar. And whatever the personality of our young lady, if truth compels us to admit that our young gentleman is scarcely so fortunate in his physical semblance, I am sure he hath a very nice mind."