Here if the writer dared (but you would be so angry) he would introduce at the length of a chapter two brand-new characters, the Misses Langlands and Oram, who suddenly present themselves to him in the most sympathetic light.  Miss Ailie has been safely stowed to port, but their little boat is only setting sail, and they are such young ones, neither out of her teens, that he would fain turn for a time from her to them.  Twelve pounds they paid for the good-will, and, oh, the exciting discussions, oh, the scraping to get the money together!  If little Miss Langlands had not been so bold, big Miss Oram must have drawn back, but if Miss Oram had not had that idea about a paper partition, of what avail the boldness of Miss Langlands?  How these two trumps of girls succeeded in hiring the Painted Lady’s spinet from Nether Drumgley—­in the absence of his wife, who on her way home from buying a cochin-china met the spinet in a cart—­how the mother of one of them, realizing in a klink that she was common no more, henceforth wore black caps instead of mutches (but the father dandered on in the old plebeian way), what the enterprise meant to a young man in distant Newcastle, whose favorite name was Jessy, how the news travelled to still more distant Canada, where a family of emigrants which had left its Sarah behind in Thrums, could talk of nothing else for weeks—­it is hard to have to pass on without dwelling on these things, and indeed—­but pass on we must.

The chief figure at the wedding of Miss Ailie was undoubtedly Mr. T. Sandys.  When one remembers his prominence, it is difficult to think that the wedding could have taken place without him.  It was he (in his Sabbath clothes again, and now flaunting his buttonhole brazenly) who in insulting language ordered the rabble to stand back there.  It was he who dashed out to the ’Sosh to get a hundred ha’pennies for the fifty pennies Mr. McLean had brought to toss into the air.  It was he who went round in the carriage to pick up the guests and whisked them in and out, and slammed the door, and saw to it that the minister was not kept waiting, and warned Miss Ailie that if she did not come now they should begin without her.  It was he who stood near her with a handkerchief ready in his hand lest she took to crying on her new brown silk (Miss Ailie was married in brown silk after all).  As a crown to his audacity, it was he who told Mr. Dishart, in the middle of a noble passage, to mind the lamp.

These duties were Dr. McQueen’s, the best man, but either demoralized by the bridegroom, who went all to pieces at the critical moment and was much more nervous than the bride, or in terror lest Grizel, who had sent him to the wedding speckless and most beautifully starched, should suddenly appear at the door and cry, “Oh, oh, take your fingers off your shirt!” he was through other till the knot was tied, and then it was too late, for Tommy had made his mark.  It was Tommy who led the way to