time of year, the plan was that as soon
as they were married they would make out a holiday by driving straight
off to Port Bredy, to see the ships and the sea and the sojers, instead
of coming back to a meal at the house of the distant relation she lived
wi', and moping about there all the afternoon.

'Well, some folks noticed that Andrey walked with rather wambling steps
to church that morning; the truth o't was that his nearest neighbour's
child had been christened the day before, and Andrey, having stood
godfather, had stayed all night keeping up the christening, for he had
said to himself, "Not if I live to be thousand shall I again be made a
godfather one day, and a husband the next, and perhaps a father the next,
and therefore I'll make the most of the blessing." So that when he
started from home in the morning he had not been in bed at all. The
result was, as I say, that when he and his bride-to-he walked up the
church to get married, the pa'son (who was a very strict man inside the
church, whatever he was outside) looked hard at Andrey, and said, very
sharp:

'"How's this, my man? You are in liquor. And so early, too. I'm
ashamed of you!"

'"Well, that's true, sir," says Andrey. "But I can walk straight enough
for practical purposes. I can walk a chalk line," he says (meaning no
offence), "as well as some other folk: and--" (getting hotter)--"I reckon
that if you, Pa'son Billy Toogood, had kept up a christening all night so
thoroughly as I have done, you wouldn't be able to stand at all; d--- me
if you would!"

'This answer made Pa'son Billy--as they used to call him--rather spitish,
not to say hot, for he was a warm-tempered man if provoked, and he said,
very decidedly: "Well, I cannot marry you in this state; and I will not!
Go home and get sober!" And he slapped the book together like a
rat-trap.

'Then the bride burst out crying as if her heart would break, for very
fear that she would lose Andrey after all her hard work to get him, and
begged and implored the pa'son to go on with the ceremony. But no.

'"I won't be a party to your solemnizing matrimony with a tipsy man,"
says Mr. Toogood. "It is not right and decent. I am sorry for you, my
young woman, but you'd better go home again. I wonder how you could
think of bringing him here drunk like this!"

'"But if--if he don't come drunk he won't come at all, sir!" she says,
through her sobs.

'"I can't help that," says the pa'son; and ple