‘That’s true’ said the miller. ‘There’s enough of ’em in these times to carry off any extras whatsoever.’
‘And it will save Bob’s feelings wonderfully. And they won’t know that the dinner was got for another sort of wedding and another sort of guests; so you’ll have their good-will for nothing.’
The miller smiled at the subtlety of the view. ‘That can hardly be called fair,’ he said. ‘Still, I did mean some of it for them, for the friends we meant to ask would not have cleared all.’
Upon the whole the idea pleased him well, particularly when he noticed the forlorn look of his sailor son as he walked about the place, and pictured the inevitably jarring effect of fiddles and tambourines upon Bob’s shattered nerves at such a crisis, even if the notes of the former were dulled by the application of a mute, and Bob shut up in a distant bedroom—a plan which had at first occurred to him. He therefore told Bob that the surcharged larder was to be emptied by the charitable process above alluded to, and hoped he would not mind making himself useful in such a good and gloomy work. Bob readily fell in with the scheme, and it was at once put in hand and the tables spread.
The alacrity with which the substituted wedding was carried out, seemed to show that the worthy pair of neighbours would have joined themselves into one long ago, had there previously occurred any domestic incident dictating such a step as an apposite expedient, apart from their personal wish to marry.
The appointed morning came, and the service quietly took place at the cheerful hour of ten, in the face of a triangular congregation, of which the base was the front pew, and the apex the west door. Mrs. Garland dressed herself in the muslin shawl like Queen Charlotte’s, that Bob had brought home, and her best plum-coloured gown, beneath which peeped out her shoes with red rosettes. Anne was present, but she considerately toned herself down, so as not to too seriously damage her mother’s appearance. At moments during the ceremony she had a distressing sense that she ought not to be born, and was glad to get home again.
The interest excited in the village, though real, was hardly enough to bring a serious blush to the face of coyness. Neighbours’ minds had become so saturated by the abundance of showy military and regal incident lately vouchsafed to them, that the wedding of middle-aged civilians was of small account, excepting in so far that it solved the question whether or not Mrs. Garland would consider herself too genteel to mate with a grinder of corn.
In the evening, Loveday’s heart was made glad by seeing the baked and boiled in rapid process of consumption by the kitchenful of people assembled for that purpose. Three-quarters of an hour were sufficient to banish for ever his fears as to spoilt food. The provisions being the cause of the assembly, and not its consequence, it had been determined to get all that would not keep consumed on that day, even if highways and hedges had to be searched for operators. And, in addition to the poor and needy, every cottager’s daughter known to the miller was invited, and told to bring her lover from camp—an expedient which, for letting daylight into the inside of full platters, was among the most happy ever known.
While Mr. and Mrs. Loveday, Anne, and Bob were standing in the parlour, discussing the progress of the entertainment in the next room, John, who had not been down all day, entered the house and looked in upon them through the open door.
‘How’s this, John? Why didn’t you come before?’