Rawdy’s testimony prevented Blumenfeldt, the florist, from asking for his pay in advance, as he had intended.  He and his son and daughter, who assisted him in his business, decorated the church and the Carroll house, and wagons laden with palms and flowers were constantly on the road.  Tuesday, the day before the wedding, was unusually warm.  Banbridge had an air of festive weariness.  Everybody who passed the church stopped and stared at the open doors and the wilting grass leaves strewn about.

Elsa Blumenfeldt, in a blue shirt-waist and black skirt, with the tightest of fair braids packed above a round, pink face, with eyes so blue they looked opaque, tied and wove garlands with the stolid radiance of her kind.  Her brother Franz worked as she did.  Only the father Blumenfeldt, who was of a more nervous strain, flew about in excitement, his fat form full of vibrations, his fat face blazing, contorting with frantic energy.

“It iss ein goot yob,” he repeated, constantly—­“ein goot yob.”  Not a doubt was left.  When he came in contact with Carroll he bowed to the ground; he was full of eager protestations, of almost hysterical assertions.  All day long he was in incessant and fruitless motion, buzzing, as it were, over his task, conserving force only in the heat of his own spirit, not in the performance of the work.  Meanwhile the son and daughter, dogged, undiverted, wrought with good results, weaving many a pretty floral fancy with their fat fingers.  Eddy Carroll had taken it upon himself to guard the church doors and prevent people from viewing the splendors before the appointed time.  All the morning he had waged war with sundry of his small associates, who were restrained from forcible entry only by the fear of the Blumenfeldt family.

“Mr. Blumenfeldt says he’ll run anybody out who goes in, and kick ’em head over heels all the way down the aisle and down the steps,” Eddy declared, mendaciously, to everybody, even his elders.

“I think you are telling a lie, little boy,” said Mrs. Samson Rawdy, who had come with a timid female friend on a tour of inspection.  Mrs. Rawdy, in virtue of her husband’s employment, felt a sort of proprietorship in the occasion.

“There won’t be a mite of trouble about our goin’ in to see the church,” she told the friend, who was a humble soul.

But Mrs. Rawdy reckoned without Eddy Carroll.  When she told him that he was telling a lie, he smiled sweetly at her.

“You’re telling a lie yourself, missis,” said he.

Mrs. Rawdy essayed to push past him, but as he stood directly in the door, and she was unable, on account of her stout habit of body, to pass him, and hardly ventured to forcibly remove him, she desisted.  “You are a sassy little boy,” said she, “and if your sister is as sassy as her brother, I pity the man that’s goin’ to marry her.”

In reply Eddy made up an impish face at her as she retreated.  Then he entered the church himself to inspect progress, returning immediately to take up his position of sentry again.  About noon Anderson passed on his way to the post-office, and nodded.