"Good-bye, sir," said Will sorrowfully, as he followed her into the street.
"Parson blessed us, darling," said Will, putting his arm round Bet's waist. "Kiss me, Bet. Thursday ain't long to wait."
CHAPTER XVII.
Bet went home, and all Wednesday she stayed indoors, taking little or no notice of her brothers, and never alluding to the subject of the wedding which was to take place the next morning. The boys, finding her intensely unsociable, devoted themselves to their own occupations, which were, after a fashion, absorbing enough. They discovered how to climb on to the roof of this very tall house, and the spice of danger which accompanied such a proceeding rendered it quite delightful to them. From the roof of Mother Bunch's house they could slide or crawl on to other roofs; and Bet knew very little of the amount of liberty they enjoyed on these dirty but airy pinnacles.
She heard their laughter as they scampered in and out of the attic to-day without paying much attention to it. She felt stupid and heavy, and the excitement she had undergone on the previous evening had in its recoil reduced her to a state of almost inertia.
The slow hours dragged themselves along, and Bet's wedding-day, the day when parson could make her and Will one—when, the license being there, and the necessary formalities gone through, they might really stand up in God's house and have the sacred knot tied between them forever—had arrived.
It was a dull, foggy morning, with a drizzling mist. No matter; it was their wedding-day, thought Will, and no one could be more cheerful than he as he donned his becoming sailor suit and brushed his curly hair, and made himself look as spruce and neat as any jack-tar in the land. Rain and mist were nothing to this son of the briny ocean, the sunshine was in his heart, and he could scarcely believe in the wonderful good fortune which was to give him the brightest, the dearest, the handsomest girl in the town.
"Wish me luck, Mrs. Jobling," he said, as he rushed downstairs and encountered his sour-faced landlady in the tiny entrance hall—"I'm to be wed this morning to Bet Granger, the finest and the best lass in Liverpool. You needn't keep the bedroom for me, Mrs. Jobling; for Bet and me, we are going to Birkenhead for our honeymoon, and on Monday I'm off on another cruise. By the way"—here Will suddenly remembered the pretty sealskin purse; he thrust his hand into his trousers pocket—"is this yourn?" he said, holding the dainty treasure out for his landlady to see.
"No, no," she said, backing a step or two; "I'd have no call to a pretty thing like that—why, it is fine! Looks as if it belonged to a lady. However did you come by it, Will?"