"It's simply this," said Phaeton. "You go up to the couple, and shake hands, and if you're a girl you kiss the bride—What did you say? You wish you were?—and wish them many happy returns of the day; then you say what kind of weather you think we've had lately, and the bridegroom says what kind he thinks, and the bride waves her fan a little; then you give a real good smile and a bow, and go into another room and eat some cake and ice-cream; and then you go home. That's a reception."
"It sounds reasonable," said I; "but I don't feel quite certain about it. I will ask my sisters."
When I asked them, they laughed, but said that if I did as Phaeton had directed, I'd probably get through safely.
Two days before the wedding, Jack resigned his place in the employ of the railroad, and took all his things away from the Box. Patsy Rafferty's father succeeded him as signal-man.
Thursday was a beautiful, dreamy October day, and as we had settled all the weighty questions of etiquette, we put on the white gloves with a feeling of the most dignified importance. The people began coming early. The boys, who were among the earliest, came in a compact crowd, and we gave them first-rate seats in the broad aisle, above the ribbon. Before ten o'clock every seat was filled, and in the steep gallery beauty and fashion were banked up, "like Niobe, all tiers."
Everybody in town seemed to be present. There were matrons with a blush of the spring-time returned to their faces, who must have witnessed scores of weddings and become connoisseurs in all that pertains to them. There were little misses in short dresses, who had never looked on such a spectacle before. There were young ladies evidently in the midst of their first campaign, just a little excited over one of those events toward which ill-natured people say all their campaigning is directed. There were fathers of families, with business-furrowed brows, brushing the cobwebs from dim recollections, and marking the discovery of each with the disappearance of a wrinkle. There were bachelors who, if not like the irreverent hearers of Goldsmith's preacher, were at least likely to go away with deep remorse or desperate resolve. There were some who would soon themselves be central figures in a similar spectacle. There were those, perhaps, whose visions of such a triumph were destined to be finally as futile as they were now vivid.
Frequent ripples of good-natured impatience ran across the sea of heads, and we who felt that we had the affair in charge began to be a little anxious, till the organ struck up a compromise between a stirring waltz and a soothing melody, which speeded the precious unoccupied moments on their long journey.
The usual number of false alarms caused the usual automatic turning of heads and eyes. But at last the bridal party, like the wolf in the fable, really came; and as they glided up the broad aisle, the bride might almost have mounted bodily to the seventh heaven on the substantial stares that were directed at her,—whence perhaps she could have slidden down again on some whispered railing at her want of bridesmaids. But her eyes were on the ground, and she heard nothing but the rustle of her own train, and saw nothing, I trust, but the visions that are dear to every human heart, in spite of the sorrowful comment of human experience.
The organ checked its melodious enthusiasm as the party reached the chancel. Then the well-known half-audible words were uttered, with a glimmer of a ring sliding upon a dainty finger. The benediction was said, a flourish of the organ sounded the retreat, and the party ran the gauntlet of the broad aisle again, while the audience, as was the fashion of that day, immediately rose to its feet and closed and crushed in behind them, like an avalanche going through a tunnel.
While we were in the church, Jimmy the Rhymer, with Lukey Finnerty to help him, had brought the old shoes in an immense basket, and arranged them on the platform at the back of the bridegroom's carriage. The cluster of seven boots which Patsy had used for a drag to control Phaeton's car, was laid down as a foundation. On this were piled all sorts of old shoes, gaiters, and slippers, bountifully contributed by the boys, and at the top of the pyramid a horseshoe contributed by Jimmy himself. Sticking out of each shoe was a small bouquet, and the whole was bound together and fastened to the platform with narrow white ribbons.