at
"Who gives this woman?" etc., until every man, woman, and child in
church was tittering and giggling, and the holy man had to come to a
full pause, and request me to realize that it was not I who was being
married.

"I do. With all my worldly goods I thee endow," was my reply to his
reminder.

"For Heaven's sake subside, or I'll thrash you within an inch of your
life when I get out of this," whispered Fred.

Dimly mistrusting that I was on the wrong track, I turned and seized
Mrs. Marigold by the hand, and began to feel in my pocket for a ring,
because I saw the groom taking one out of his pocket.

The giggling and tittering increased; somebody--father or the
constable--took me by the shoulder and marched me out of that; after
which, I suppose, the ceremony was duly concluded. I only know that
somebody knocked me down about five minutes afterward--I have been
told that it was the bridegroom who did it--and that all the books of
etiquette on earth won't fortify a man against the attacks of
constitutional bashfulness.

CHAPTER IX.

MEETS A PAIR OF BLUE EYES.

I kept pretty quiet the remainder of that summer--didn't even attend
church for several weeks. In fact, I got father to give me a vacation,
and beat a retreat into the country during the month of July, to an
aunt of mine, who lived on a small farm with her husband, her son of
fourteen, and a "hand." Their house was at least a mile from the
nearest neighbor's, and as I was less afraid of Aunt Jerusha than of
any other being of her sex, and as there was not another frock,
sun-bonnet, or apron within the radius of a mile, I promised myself a
month of that negative bliss which comes from retrospection, solitude,
and the pleasure of following the men about the harvest-field. Sitting
quietly under some shadowing tree, with my line cast into the still
pool of a little babbling trout-brook, where it was held in some
hollow of nature's hand, I had leisure to forget the past and to make
good resolutions for the future. Belle Marigold was forever lost to
me. She was Mrs. Hencoop; and Fred had knocked me down because I had
been so unfortunate as to lose my presence of mind at his wedding.
All was over between us.

The course now open for me to pursue was to forever steel my heart to
the charms of the other sex, to attend strictly to business, to grow
rich and honored, while, at the same time, I hardened into a sort of
granite obelisk, incapable of blushing