e next day, and to
some extent on the days following.

IV.

CONSOLATION.

The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled
cars, old open gigs, wagonettes with leather hoods, and the young people
from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows,
holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot and well
shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from Goderville,
from Normanville, and from Cany. All the relatives of both families had
been invited, quarrels between friends arranged, acquaintances long
since lost sight of written to.

From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then
the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the
steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all
sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies wearing bonnets,
had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with
the ends tucked into belts, or little colored fichus fastened down
behind with a pin, that left the back of the neck bare. The lads,
dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes
(many that day handselled their first pair of boots), and by their
sides, speaking never a word, wearing the white dress of their first
communion lengthened for the occasion, were some big girls of fourteen
or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered,
their hair greasy with rose-pomade, and very much afraid of soiling
their gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the
carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it
themselves. According to their different social positions, they wore
tail-coats, overcoats, shooting-jackets, cutaway-coats: fine tail-coats,
redolent of family respectability, that came out of the wardrobe only on
state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and
round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting-jackets of coarse cloth,
usually worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short
cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like a
pair of eyes, the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a
carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at
the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say, with
collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small
plaits and the waist fastened very far down with a worked