of harm." Joe overheard this, and wished that his aunt
was back in her bed at Marmaduke Lodge.

Then the marriage was over, and they all trooped into the vestry to sign
the book. "You can't get out of that now," said Mrs. Crabtree to Joe.

"I don't want to. I have got the fairest girl in these parts for my
wife, and, as I believe, the best young woman." This he said with a
spirit for which Mrs. Crabtree had not given him credit, and Algy Soames
heard him and admired his friend beneath his blue necktie. And one of
the girls heard it, and cried tears of joy as she told her sister
afterward in the bedroom. "Oh, what a darling he is!" Molly had said,
amid her own sobbing. Joe stood an inch higher among them all because of
that word.

Then came the breakfast,--that dullest, saddest hour of all. To feed
heavily about twelve in the morning is always a nuisance,--a nuisance so
abominable that it should be avoided under any other circumstances than
a wedding in your own family. But that wedding-breakfast, when it does
come, is the worst of all feeding. The smart dresses and bare shoulders
seen there by daylight, the handing people in and out among the seats,
the very nature of the food, made up of chicken and sweets and flummery,
the profusion of champagne, not sometimes of the very best on such an
occasion; and then the speeches! They fall generally to the lot of some
middle-aged gentlemen, who seem always to have been selected for their
incapacity. But there is a worse trouble yet remaining--in the unnatural
repletion which the sight even of so much food produces, and the fact
that your dinner for that day is destroyed utterly and forever.

Mr. Crabtree and the two fathers made the speeches, over and beyond that
which was made by Joe himself. Joe's father was not eloquent. He brewed,
no doubt, good beer, without a taste in it beyond malt and hops;--no man
in the county brewed better beer; but he couldn't make a speech. He got
up, dressed in a big white waistcoat, and a face as red as his son's
hunting-coat, and said that he hoped his boy would make a good husband.
All he could say was, that being a lover had not helped to make him a
good brewer. Perhaps when Molly Annesley was brought nearer to
Buntingford, Joe mightn't spend so much of his time in going to and fro.
Perhaps Mr. Joe might not demand so much of her attention. This was the
great point he made, and it was received well by all but the bride, who
whispered to Joe