eggs and champagne. Yes, sir; don't think
Aunt Mollie had overlooked the fashionable drink. Hadn't she been reading
all her life about champagne being served at wedding breakfasts? So there
it was in a new wash boiler, buried in cracked ice. And while the women
was serving the ham and eggs and hot biscuits at the long table built out
in the side yard, Uncle Henry exploded several bottles of this wine and
passed it to one and all, and a toast was drunk to the legal bride and
groom; after which eating was indulged in heartily.

"It was a merry feast, even without the lobster salad, which Aunt Mollie
apologized for not having. She said she knew lobster salad went with a
wedding breakfast, the same as champagne; but the canned lobster she had
ordered hadn't come, so we'd have to make out with the home-cured ham and
some pork sausage that now come along. Nobody seemed downhearted about
the missing lobster salad. Uncle Henry passed up and down the table
filling cups and glasses, and Aunt Mollie, in her wedding finery, kept
the food coming with some buckwheat cakes at the finish.

"It was a very satisfactory wedding breakfast, if any one should ever
make inquiries of you. By the time Uncle Henry had the ends out of half
the champagne bottles I guess everyone there was glad he had decided
to drag Aunt Mollie back from the primrose path.

"It all passed off beautifully, except for one tragedy. Oh, yes; there's
always something to mar these affairs. But this hellish incident didn't
come till the very last. After the guests had pretty well et themselves
to a standstill, Dave Pickens got up and come back with a fiddle, and
stood at the end of the grape arbour and played a piece.

"'Someone must have supplied that wretch with another fiddle!' says Mrs.
Julia, who was kind of cross, anyway, having been bedded down on a short
sofa and not liking champagne for breakfast--and, therefore, not liking
to see others drink it.

"'Oh, he's probably borrowed one for your celebration,' I says.

"Dave played a couple more lively pieces; and pretty soon, when we got up
from the table, he come over to Mrs. Julia and me.

"'It's a peach of a fiddle,' says Dave. 'It says in the catalogue it's a
genuine Cremonika--looks like a Cremona and plays just as good. I bet
it's the best fiddle in the world to be had for twelve dollars!'

"'What's that?' says Mrs. Julia, erecting herself like an alarmed
rattlesnake.

"'Sure! It's a genuine twelve-dol