“Come, come! How long do you mean to keep me standing here? Do you intend to be married or not? Oh, it’s thee, is it? [to Bess] Well, thah’s waited long enough.—See that you make her a good husband [to Tom]. Kneel down here,” and he placed them, not roughly, almost in the centre of the altar, pulling others to their knees beside them, with scant ceremony.
“What do you want here?” in his harshest tones he asked a very youthful-looking couple.
“To be wed,” was the prompt answer of the young man.
“Ugh!” grunted the Parson, “what’s the world coming to? I used to marry men and women—now I marry children! Here, you silly babies, take your places.”
Another file of candidates for matrimony being ranged (after some pushing and pulling) in pairs around the altar, Joshua took his book and the service began.
So long as it was general, all went tolerably smoothly—women and men alike were too bashful and confused to know much what was said, or what they responded, and certainly they rarely looked in each other’s faces. At length there was a slight stir and a whispering from the quarter where Matt Cooper stood beside his daughter.
“Silence there!” roared Joshua, in a voice which set a row of hearts in a flutter, and there was silence.
But he had come to the troth-plight, and again the same commotion was apparent as he approached the Coopers.
“What’s wrong here?” he demanded, pausing before Martha, who was all in a tremble.
“Moi lass is waitin’ fur her mon,” answered Matthew from behind.