“O, what a boy!  I was going to put some of my nightly blue sirreup on your hangerjif, and now I won’t—­see if I do!”

“I don’t want anybody’s sirup,” retorted Johnny; “’tic’ly such a cross party’s as you are.”

“Johnny Eastman, you just stop murdering me.”

“Murdering you?”

“Yes; ‘he that hateth his brother.’”

“I’m not your brother, I should hope.”

“Well, a cousin’s just as bad.”

“No, not half so bad.  I wouldn’t be your brother if I had to be a beggar.”

“And I wouldn’t let you be a brother, Johnny Eastman, not if I had to go and be a heathen.”

“O, what a Dotty!”

“O, what a Johnny!”

By this time the little bridesmaid’s face was anything but pleasant to behold.  Both her dimples were buried out of sight, and she had as many wrinkles in her forehead as grandma Head.  Johnny danced about the room, holding before her eyes the bone of contention, then drawing it away again in the most provoking manner.

“If you act so, Johnny Eastman, I won’t have you for my bridegroom.”

“And I won’t have you for my bride—­so there!”

The moment these words were spoken, the angry children were frightened.  They had not intended to go so far.  It had been their greatest pleasure for several weeks to think of “standing up” at a wedding; and they would neither of them have missed the honor on any account.  But now, in their foolish strife, they had made it impossible to do the very thing they most desired to do.  They had said the fatal words, and were both of them too proud to draw back.  There was one comfort.  “The wedding will be stopped,” thought Dotty; “they can’t be married ’thout Johnny and me.”

The guests were all assembled.  It was now time for the bridal train to go down stairs and have the ceremony performed.  As the children left the chamber, uncertain what to do, but resolved that whichever “stood up,” the other would sit down, Johnny seized a bottle of panacea which stood on the mantel, and wet the corner of Dotty’s handkerchief.

“There is some sirup worth having,” said he; “stronger than yours.  Rub it in your eyes, and see if it isn’t.”

The boy did not mean what he said, or at any rate we will hope he did not; but Dotty, in her haste and agitation, obeyed him without stopping one moment to think.

Instantly the wedding was forgotten, the bouquet-holder, the anger, the disappointment, and everything else but the agony in her eyes.  It was so dreadful that she could only scream, and spin round and round like a top.

A scene of confusion followed.  The poor child was so frantic that her father was obliged to hold her by main force, while her mother tried to bathe her eyes with cold water.  They were fearfully inflamed, and for a whole hour the wedding was delayed, while poor Dotty lay struggling in her father’s arms, or tore about the nursery like a wild creature.