her stretch out her arms.

"Jo ..."

Joanna stooped and caught her to her heart, and for a moment, the last
moment, the big and the little sister were as in times of old.

Sec.17

Ellen's wedding was the most wonderful that Brodnyx and Pedlinge had
seen for years. It was a pity that the law of the land required it to
take place in Pedlinge church, which was comparatively small and mean,
and which indeed Joanna could never feel was so Established as the
church at Brodnyx, because it had only the old harmonium, and queer
paintings of angels instead of the Lion and the Unicorn.

However, Mr. Elphick ground and sweated wonders out of "the old
harmonister" as it was affectionately called by the two parishes, and
everyone was too busy staring at the bride and the bride's sister to
notice whether angels or King George the Third presided over the altar.

Joanna had all the success that she had longed for and expected. She
walked down the aisle with Ellen white and drooping on her arm, like a
sunflower escorting a lily. When Mr. Pratt said "Who giveth this woman
to be married to this man?" she answered "I do" in a voice that rang
through the church. Afterwards, she took her handkerchief out of her
pocket and cried a little, as is seemly at weddings.

Turner of Northlade was Arthur Alce's best man, and there were four
bridesmaids dressed in pink--Maudie Vine, Gertrude Prickett, Maggie
Southland and Ivy Cobb. They carried bouquets of roses with lots of
spiraea, and wore golden hearts "the gift of the bridegroom." Altogether
the brilliance of the company made up for the deficiencies of its
barn-like setting and the ineffectiveness of Mr. Pratt, who, discomposed
by the enveloping presence of Joanna, blundered more helplessly than
ever, so that, as Joanna said afterwards, she was glad when it was all
finished without anyone getting married besides the bride and
bridegroom.

After the ceremony there was a breakfast at Ansdore, with a wedding-cake
and ices and champagne, and waiters hired from the George Hotel at Rye.
Ellen stood at the end of the room shaking hands with a long procession
of Pricketts, Vines, Furneses, Southlands, Bateses, Turners, Cobbs....
She looked a little tired and droopy, for she had had a trying day, with
Joanna fussing and fighting her ever since six in the morning; and now
she felt resentfully that her sister had snatched the splendours of the
occasion from her to herself--it did not seem right