rry along now, we'll have to rustle. The minister's comin' at
twelve o'clock sharp, and they're goin' away on the afternoon train.
He's a right smart-lookin' fellow, this Jack--the little girl's doin'
well, all right, all right; he maybe hasn't got as good a pedigree as
Arthur, but he'll suit her better. She won't sass back to him, I'll
bet, the way she would to Arthur. She'd give Arthur a queer old time,
I know, but this chap'll manage her; he's got that sort of a way with
him. I could see it, though I was only speakin' a few words to him."

* * *

Pearl was dressed in her cream silk dress, and carried a bouquet of
roses.

"Land sakes!" Aunt Kate exclaimed, "where does anyone get roses at
this time o' year, I'd like to know?

"I lived in Ontario many a year, and that's what I never saw was roses
in December. They must 'a' had a sheltered place to grow in." And
every person who heard her was too loyal a Manitoban to enlighten
her.

Thursa, in a trailing gown of white silk mull, came into the parlour
leaning on Arthur's arm, and made the responses as demurely as the
staid Aunt Prudence would have desired. Any one looking at Arthur's
unmoved face would never have guessed at the tragedy that was taking
place in the young man's heart.

The wedding breakfast was a very jolly meal, and everybody, Arthur
included, was in the best of humour. Young Jack Smeaton clearly
demonstrated that the old lawyer had expressed the truth when he
said: "Jack Smeaton has a way with him." He discussed the various
knitting wools with Mrs. Perkins, and told Thomas Perkins a new way
of putting formalin on his seed-wheat to get rid of the smut, and how
to put patches on grain bags with flour paste. Mrs. Perkins told very
vividly the story of Mary Ann Corbett's wedding, where the bridegroom
failed 'to appear, and she married her first love, who was acting in
the capacity of best man, and the old man Corbett gave them the deed
of one hundred and fifty acres of land, and a cow and a feather bed,
and some other tokens of paternal affection, and they lived happy
ever afterward.

While she was telling this, her husband, in his usual graphic way,
told his story, which happened to be on this occasion an account of
the death of his old friend, Tony Miner; which had happened the
winter before.

"The last words Tony said--mind ye, he was sensible to the last--was
to tell his missus not to let the undertaker do her on the price of
the coffin. He wa