ter marries, and goes
away and leaves you."

"Damned sight sadder," commented Uncle Gutton, "when she don't go off,
but hangs on at home year after year and expects you to keep her."

I credit Uncle Gutton with intending this as an aside for the exclusive
benefit of the maternal Sellars; but his voice was not of the timbre
that lends itself to secrecy. One of the bridesmaids, a plain, elderly
girl, bending over her plate, flushed scarlet. I concluded her to be
Miss Gutton.

"It doesn't seem to me," said Aunt Gutton from the other end of the
table, "that gentlemen are as keen on marrying nowadays as they used to
be."

"Got to know a bit about it, I expect," sounded the small, shrill voice
of the unseen Joseph.

"To my thinking," exclaimed a hatchet-faced gentleman, "one of the evils
crying most loudly for redress at the present moment is the utterly
needless and monstrous expense of legal proceedings." He spoke rapidly
and with warmth. "Take divorce. At present, what is it? The rich man's
luxury."

Conversation appeared to be drifting in a direction unsuitable to the
occasion; but Jarman was fortunately there to seize the helm.

"The plain fact of the matter is," said Jarman, "girls have gone up in
value. Time was, so I've heard, when they used to be given away with
a useful bit of household linen, maybe a chair or two. Nowadays--well,
it's only chaps wallowing in wealth like Clapper there as can afford a
really first-class article."

Mr. Clapper, not a gentleman in other respects of exceptional
brilliancy, possessed one quality that popularity-seekers might have
envied him: the ability to explode on the slightest provocation into a
laugh instinct with all the characteristics of genuine delight.

"Give and take," observed the maternal Sellars, so soon as Mr. Clapper's
roar had died away; "that's what you've got to do when you're married."

"Give a deal more than you bargained for and take what you don't
want--that sums it up," came the bitter voice of the unseen.

"Oh, do be quiet, Joe," advised the stout young lady, from which I
concluded she had once been the lean young lady. "You talk enough for a
man."

"Can't I open my mouth?" demanded the indignant oracle.

"You look less foolish when you keep it shut," returned the stout young
lady.

"We'll show them how to get on," observed the Lady 'Ortensia to her
bridegroom, with a smile.

Mr. Clapper responded with a gurgle.

"When me and the old girl th