The boy did not reply, but fixing his weather eye on Bradley, indulged in a wink of such preternatural meaning, that Alma was once more convulsed with laughter. Then, after giving vent to a prolonged whistle, he cracked his whip, and urged his horses on.
Through green lanes, sweet with hanging honeysuckle and sprinkled with flowers of early summer; past sleepy ponds, covered with emerald slime and haunted by dragon flies glittering like gold; along upland stretches of broad pasture, commanding distant views of wood-land, thorpe and river; they passed along that sunny summer day; until at last, creeping along an avenue of ashes and flowering limes, they came to the gate of an old church, where the carriage stopped.
The lovers alighted, and ordering the boy to remain in attendance, approached the church—a time-worn, rain-stained edifice half smothered in ivy, and with rooks cawing from its belfry tower.
They were evidently expected. The clerk, a little old man who walked with a stick, met them at the church door, and informed them that the clergyman was waiting for them in the vestry.
A few minutes later, the two were made man and wife—the solitary spectator of the ceremony, except the officials, being the weird boy, who had stolen from his seat, and left his horses waiting in the road, in order to see what was going on. The clergyman, ancient and time-worn as his church, mumbled a benediction, and, after subscribing their names in the register and paying the customary fees, they shook hands with him, and came again out into the sunshine.
Whatever the future might bring forth to cloud her marriage path, that bridal morning was like a dream of paradise to Alma Craik. In a private room of the old ‘Wheatsheaf,’ a room sweet with newly-cut flowers, and overlooking orchards stretching down to the banks of a pretty river, they breakfasted, or lunched, together—on simple fare, it is true, but with all things clean and pure. A summer shower passed over the orchards as they sat by the open window hand in hand; and then, as the sun flashed out again, the trees dript diamonds, and the long grass glittered with golden dew.
‘How sweet and still it is here, my darling! I wish we could stay in such a spot for ever, and never return again to the dreary city and the busy world.’
She crept to his side as he spoke, and rested her head upon his shoulder.
‘Are you happy now, dear Ambrose?’
‘Quite happy,’ he replied.