In a short time the hall was beautifully hung with green, and the odour that filled it would have made one of those calico cats, stuffed with batting, turn a somersault. When the hall was trimmed Bidelia, never stopping to admire her own handiwork, ran off with her kittens at her heels to make her own toilet and her children’s, and to summon the wedding guests.
Not a Purrer was lacking to the “large and fashionable gathering which filled the hall,” as The Weekly Mews, Purrington’s paper, stated when it appeared on the following Saturday.
’Clipsy played beautifully on his fiddle as the bridal procession approached. Rob remembered having once seen a picture of a Puritan wedding, in which the bride was represented as riding on a splendid snow-white bull. So the Purrers, acting on this hint, had got Brindle to allow Lady Blanche to ride to her wedding on Brindle’s back, and the effect of the very small snow-white bride clinging to big Brindle’s ridge-poled back was most impressive. The groom walked at the cow’s side, strutting along as proud as a cat, a duke, and a peacock, all rolled into one—and well he might be, for the Lady Blanche was lovely.
Tommy Traddles stood on the platform waiting the bridal procession. It entered the hall, preceded by Puttel and Dolly Varden, in immense white bows, as bridesmaids, and following them came Nugget, also in a white bow bigger, far, than his head, scattering catnip blossoms before the happy couple’s softly falling, padded feet.
It was a most beautiful sight, and a deep purr rolled around the hall as the Purrers gazed admiringly at this first wedding in Purrington.
Rob had drawn up the marriage service, which was brief and simple.
“It was a most beautiful sight.”
“Do you promise, Ods Bobs,” Doctor Traddles asked, “to keep this cat provided with mice all her life? To protect her from dampness, crossness, and all other things she wouldn’t like, just as far as you can? And to love her until she is white, not with this beautiful young whiteness she has now, but with the whiteness of old age?”
“I promise,” said Ods Bobs, in a deep voice.