The course of the wedding breakfast, thus enlivened, proceeded according to programme. It was a felicitous scene, what with the balmy, brilliant day, the brightly dressed assembly, and the picturesque addition of the pack of hounds, which danced attendance at a respectful distance within proper limits previously prepared for them. After everybody had congratulated the happy pair, they showed themselves at an angle of the piazza to cut the wedding-cake which stood festal and massive on an adjacent table.
Then at the proper moment the bride's health was proposed by Gerald Marcy with dignity and grace, in pledge of which everybody's glass of champagne was lifted and drained. The bridegroom, goaded into speech, made a few halting remarks expressive of his own happiness and good fortune, ending in a serious tag of chivalrous, if slightly involved, sentiment, which evoked fresh enthusiasm.
Toasts were drunk to the bridesmaids, the parents of the bride, and the Hunt Club. In response to the last of these Mrs. Baxter's brother, Dick Weston, who possessed a deep-toned voice, started the club-song, the words of which had been composed by Andrew Cunningham in his salad days under the inspiration of five Scotches and soda, and been adopted on the occasion of its first delivery as the property of the colony:
Across the uplands brown we ride,
And our pulses bound with life's ruddy tide,
As we follow the hounds o'er the country-side
In the brisk October morning.
So he sang, and everybody joined in the refrain with genial gusto, not excepting the bride—"Miss West Wind" still, in spite of her veil and satin attire—who waved her glass and carolled with the rest, until even the hounds seemed to catch the infection and added their notes to the general jubilation. Then it transpired that stout Miss Marbury had found the ring in her piece of wedding-cake. This was the source of some merriment, amid which the bride slipped away to change her dress, and the guests, left to their own devices, returned to their discussion of the half-digested news.
Gerald Marcy, who had heard it, like everybody else, with mingled revolt and bewilderment, passed from his functions as toast-master to what might be called the storm-centre of the animadversion, a small summer-house or arbor on the trellis of which June roses were blowing, and where the Andrew Cunninghams, Mrs. Cole, the Rev. Percy Ward, and several others were congregated. He arrived just as the rector was exclaiming, with pained fervor: