It was a pretty wedding, and everybody said that everybody looked very nice; which is always comforting to those whose souls are stitched up in their flounces, and whose happiness and self-respect rise or fall according to the becomingness of their attire.  The village school-children lining the churchwalk strewed flowers for the bride’s material and symbolic path.  Dressed in a mixture of white, scarlet and blue, they made a brilliant show of color, and gave a curious suggestion of so many tricolored flags set up along the path; but they added to the general gayety of the scene, and they themselves thought Miss Josephine’s wedding surely as grand as the queen’s.

There were five bridesmaids, including little Fina, whom kindly Josephine had specially desired should bear her part in the pageant which was to give her a mother and a friend.  The remaining four were the two Misses Harrowby, Adelaide Birkett, as her long-time confidante, and that other step-daughter, more legitimate if less satisfactory than Fina—­Leam.

The first three of these four elder maids came naturally and of course:  the last was the difficulty.  When first asked, Learn had refused positively—­for her quite vehemently—­to have hand or part in the wedding.  It brought back too vividly the sin and the sorrow of the former time; and she despised her father’s inconstancy of heart too much to care to assist at a service which was to her the service of folly and wickedness in one.

She said, “No, no:  I will not come.  I, bridesmaid at papa’s wedding! bridesmaid to his third wife!  No, I will not!” And she said it with an insistance, an emphasis, that seemed immovable, and all the more so because it was natural.

But Josephine pleaded with her so warmly—­she was evidently so much in earnest in her wish, she meant to be so good and kind to the girl, to lift her from the shadows and place her in the sunshine of happiness—­that Leam was at last touched deeply enough to give way.  She had come now to recognize that fidelity to be faithful need not be churlish; and perhaps she was influenced by Josephine’s final argument.  For when she had said “No, I cannot come to the wedding,” for about the fourth time, Josephine shot her last bolt in these words:  “Oh, dear Leam, do come.  I am sure Edgar will be hurt and displeased if you are not one of my bridesmaids.  He will think you do not like the connection, and you know what a proud man he is:  he will be so vexed with me.”

On which Leam said gravely, “I would not like to hurt or displease Major Harrowby; and I do not like or dislike the connection;” adding, after a pause, and putting on her little royal manner, “I will come.”

Josephine’s honest heart swelled with the humble gratitude of the self-abased.  “Good Leam! dear girl!” she cried, kissing her with tearful eyes and wet lips—­poor Learn! who hated to be kissed, and who had by no means intended that her grave caress on the day of betrothal should be taken as a precedent and acted on unreservedly.  And after she had kissed her frequently she thanked her again effusively, as if she had received some signal grace that could hardly be repaid.