“I never can mind seeing such a whispering as there was,” said Mr. Penny, also loudly, to the room above.  “And such sorrowful envy on the maidens’ faces; really, I never did see such envy as there was!”

Fancy’s lineaments varied in innumerable little flushes, and her heart palpitated innumerable little tremors of pleasure.  “But perhaps,” she said, with assumed indifference, “it was only because no religion was going on just then?”

“O, no; nothing to do with that.  ’Twas because of your high standing in the parish.  It was just as if they had one and all caught Dick kissing and coling ye to death, wasn’t it, Mrs. Dewy?”

“Ay; that ’twas.”

“How people will talk about one’s doings!” Fancy exclaimed.

“Well, if you make songs about yourself, my dear, you can’t blame other people for singing ’em.”

“Mercy me! how shall I go through it?” said the young lady again, but merely to those in the bedroom, with a breathing of a kind between a sigh and a pant, round shining eyes, and warm face.

“O, you’ll get through it well enough, child,” said Mrs. Dewy placidly.  “The edge of the performance is took off at the calling home; and when once you get up to the chancel end o’ the church, you feel as saucy as you please.  I’m sure I felt as brave as a sodger all through the deed—­though of course I dropped my face and looked modest, as was becoming to a maid.  Mind you do that, Fancy.”

“And I walked into the church as quiet as a lamb, I’m sure,” subjoined Mrs. Penny.  “There, you see Penny is such a little small man.  But certainly, I was flurried in the inside o’ me.  Well, thinks I, ’tis to be, and here goes!  And do you do the same:  say, ’’Tis to be, and here goes!’”

“Is there such wonderful virtue in ‘’Tis to be, and here goes!’” inquired Fancy.

“Wonderful!  ’Twill carry a body through it all from wedding to churching, if you only let it out with spirit enough.”

“Very well, then,” said Fancy, blushing. “’Tis to be, and here goes!”

“That’s a girl for a husband!” said Mrs. Dewy.

“I do hope he’ll come in time!” continued the bride-elect, inventing a new cause of affright, now that the other was demolished.

“’Twould be a thousand pities if he didn’t come, now you be so brave,” said Mrs. Penny.

Grandfather James, having overheard some of these remarks, said downstairs with mischievous loudness—­

“I’ve known some would-be weddings when the men didn’t come.”

“They’ve happened not to come, before now, certainly,” said Mr. Penny, cleaning one of the glasses of his spectacles.

“O, do hear what they are saying downstairs,” whispered Fancy.  “Hush, hush!”

She listened.

“They have, haven’t they, Geoffrey?” continued grandfather James, as Geoffrey entered.

“Have what?” said Geoffrey.

“The men have been known not to come.”