"I think I can arrange it," said the organist smiling, and he played the march from "Tannhäuser" and the march from "Athalie," which he always played when people asked for something unusual, and the effect was considered very pleasing and original. Altogether it was the prettiest wedding any one had seen in years, according to the testimony of those who attended the reception—which did become a perfect tomasha. But as tomasha-goers are notoriously biased their testimony probably wasn't legal and no respectable judge would have accepted it as evidence. The only legal thing about the whole affair was the ceremony, which was fully as much so as if it had been before a magistrate, which Madge swore it should be if she ever had to go through it again and regretted bitterly it hadn't been this time.... Well, perhaps, when she looked about her and saw how unaffectedly happy her mother and Aunt Tizzy and the bridesmaids and all the other good people were, she didn't regret it quite so much.
"Though it is rather absurd, getting married to please other people, isn't it?" she remarked as they drove off at last, leaving the tomasha-goers to carouse as long as Aunt Tizzy could make them.
"I think I'd do almost anything to please Aunt Tizzy," said Harry. "Now that it's all over, that is. Get married again, even.... After all," he added suddenly, shamelessly going back on all his professions of the last few days; "after all, you know, it was rather a good wedding!"
Which shows that he was just as biased as any one, at bottom!
CHAPTER IX
LABYRINTHS
How many people should you say could be packed into a three-hundred foot barkantine-rigged steam yacht, capable of fourteen knots under steam alone, for a night in late June, presumably hot, anchored in a noisy estuary off Long Island Sound without making them all wish they had never been born? We ourselves should hate to have to answer the question offhand. So did Aunt Cecilia, whom it concerned more closely than any one else, and she did not have to answer it offhand at all, having all the available statistics within reach. In fact, she had spent the best part of one hot New York June morning over it already, sitting in her darkened front drawing-room because it was the coolest room in the house, amid ghost-like furniture whose drab slip-covers concealed nothing less than real Louis Quinze. On her lap—or what Uncle James said if she didn't look out wouldn't be her lap very long—she held a magazine and over the magazine an expensive piece of letter-paper, on one leaf of which was a list of names and on the other a plan drawn in wobbly and unarchitectural lines—obviously a memory sketch of the sleeping accommodations of the Halcyone. Near what even in the sketch was undoubtedly the largest and most comfortable of the Halcyone's cabins she had written in firm unmistakable letters the word "Me," and opposite two other rooms she had inscribed in only slightly less bold characters the initials "H. and M." and "J. and B." So far so good; why not go on thus as long as the list or the cabins held and consider the problem solved? It wasn't as simple as that, it seemed. Some of the people hadn't been asked, or might be asked only if there was room enough, and the boys might bring in people at the last moment; it was very confusing. And not even the extent of the sleeping accommodations was as constant as might have been desired. It was ridiculous, of course, but even after all these years she could not be quite sure whether there were two little single rooms down by the galley skylight or only one. She was practically sure there were two, but suppose she were mistaken? And then, if it came to that, the boys and almost as many friends as they cared to bring might sleep on the smoking-room sofas....
"No ... no, I'm not sure how wise that would be," she mused, certain things she had seen and been told of boat-race celebrations straying into her mind. "The smoking-room cushions have only just been covered...."
A ring at the doorbell. She glanced up at a pierglass (also Louis Quinze) opposite her and strained her eyes at its mosquito-netting covered surface. Her hair was far from what she could have wished; she hoped it would be no one she would have to see. Oh, Beatrice.