He made another assenting gesture. He did not care to talk, and Berty slipped quietly from his office.
CHAPTER XX.
SELINA’S WEDDING
Selina Everest and the Mayor were married.
On one of the loveliest of autumn mornings, the somewhat mature bride had been united in the holy bonds of matrimony to the somewhat mature bridegroom, and now, in the old family mansion of the Everests, they were receiving the congratulations of their numerous friends. Selina had had a church wedding. That she insisted on, greatly to the distress and confusion of her modest husband. He had walked up the aisle of the church as if to his hanging. One minute he went from red to purple, from purple to violent perspiration, the next he became as if wrapped in an ice-cold sheet, and not until then could he recover himself.
But now it was all over. This congratulatory business was nothing compared to the agonizing experience of being in a crowded church, the shrinking target for hundreds of criticizing, shining, awful eyes.
Yes, he was in an ecstasy to think the ordeal was over. Selina never would have made him go through it, if she had had the faintest conception of what his sufferings would be.
She had enjoyed it. All women enjoy that sort of thing. They are not awkward. How can they be, with their sweeping veils and trailing robes? He had felt like a fence-post, a rail—anything stiff, and ugly, and uncomfortable, and in his heart of hearts he wondered that all those well-dressed men and women had not burst into shouts of laughter at him.
Well, it was over—over, thank fortune. He never had been so glad to escape from anything in his life, as he had been to get out of the church and away from the crowd of people. That alone made him blissfully happy, and then, in addition, he had Selina.