There’s nothing like singing from your heart, and, though I was the minister and stood on a box which was shaky, I sang, too.  I led.

The bride didn’t think it was modest to hold up her head, and she was the only silent one.  But the bridegroom and bridesmaids sang, and it sounded like the revivals at the Methodist church.  It was grand.

And that bride!  She was Miss Bray.  A graven image of her couldn’t have been more like her.

She was stuffed in the right places, and her hair was frizzed just like Miss Bray’s.  Frizzed in front, and slick and tight in the back; and her face was a purple pink, and powdered all over, with a piece of dough just above her mouth on the left side to correspond with Miss Bray’s mole.

And she held herself so like her, shoulders back, and making that little nervous sniffle with her nose, like Miss Bray makes when she’s excited, that once I had to wink at her to stop.

The groom didn’t look like Dr. Rudd.  But she wore men’s clothes, and that’s the only way you’d know some men were men, and almost anything will do for a groom.  Nobody noticed him.

We were getting on just grand, and I was marrying away, telling them what they must do and what they mustn’t.  Particularly that they mustn’t get mad and leave each other, for Yorkburg was very old-fashioned and didn’t like changes, and would rather stick to its mistakes than go back on its word.  And then I turned to the bride.

“Miss Bray,” I said, “have you told this man you are marrying that you are two-faced and underhand, and can’t be trusted to tell the truth?  Have you told him that nobody loves you, and that for years you have tried to pass for a lamb, when you are an old sheep?  And does he know that though you’re a good manager on little and are not lazy, that your temper’s been ruined by economizing, and that at times, if you were dead, there’d be no place for you?  Peter wouldn’t pass you, and the devil wouldn’t stand you.  And does he know he’s buying a pig in a bag, and that the best wedding present he could give you would be a set of new teeth?  And will you promise to stop pink powder and clean your finger-nails every day?  And—­”

But I got no further, for something made me look up, and there, standing in the door, was the real Miss Bray.

All I said was—­“Let us pray!”

VI

“My lady of the lovely heart”

Beautiful gloriousness!  Miss Katherine has come back!

What a different place some people can make the same place!

Yesterday there wasn’t an interesting thing in Yorkburg.  Nothing but dust and shabby old houses and poky people who knew nothing to talk about, and to-day—­oh, to-day it’s dear!  I love it!

You see, after that wedding everything went wrong.  The girls said it wasn’t fair for me to be punished so much more than the rest, and they wanted to tell the Board about it; but for once I agreed with Miss Bray.