over with."

When Ellaphine's mother learned that Ellaphine had a chance to marry an
heir and was asking for time, Mrs. Govers delivered an oration that
would have sent Ellaphine to the altar with almost anybody, let alone
her idolized Eddie.

The wedding was a quiet affair. Everybody in Carthage was invited. Few
came. People feared that if they went they would have to send
wedding-presents, and Eddie and Ellar were too unimportant to the social
life of Carthage to make their approval valuable.

Eddie wore new shoes, which creaked and pinched. He looked twice as
uncomfortable and twice as sad as he had looked at his uncle Loren's
obsequies; and he suffered that supreme disenchantment of a too-large
collar with a necktie rampant.

In spite of the ancient and impregnable theory that all brides are
beautiful, was there ever a woman who looked her best in the uniform of
approaching servitude? In any case, Ellaphine's best was not good, and
she was at her worst in her ill-fitting white gown, with the veil askew.
Her graceless carriage was not improved by the difficulty of keeping
step with her escort and the added task of keeping step with the music.

The organist, Mr. Norman Maugans, always grew temperamental when he
played Mendelssohn's "Wedding March," and always relieved its monotonous
cadence with passionate accelerations and abrupt retardations. That made
walking difficult.

When the minister had finished with the couple and they moved down the
aisle to what the paper called the "Bridle March, by Lohengrin," Mr.
Maugans always craned his neck to see and usually put his foot on the
wrong pedal, with the startling effect of firing a cannon at the
departing guests.

He did not crane his neck, however, to see Mr. and Mrs. Pouch depart.
They were too commonplace entirely. He played the march with such
doleful indifference that Eddie found the aisle as long as the distance
from Marathon to Athens. Also he was trying to walk so that his pinching
shoes would not squeak.

At the end of the last pew Eddie and Ellaphine encountered Luella
Thickins leaning out into the aisle and triumphantly beautiful in her
finest raiment. Her charms were militant and vindictive, and her smile
plainly said: "Uh-huh! Don't you wish you'd taken me instead of that
thing you've hitched up with for life?"

Eddie gave her one glance and found her hideous. Ellaphine lowered her
eyelids in defeat and slunk from the church, thinking:

"Now h