h that to make merry
just now would be slighting Bob's feelings, as if we didn't care who was
not married, so long as we were,' he said. 'But then, what's to be done
about the victuals?'

'Give a dinner to the poor folk,' she suggested. 'We can get everything
used up that way.'

'That's true' said the miller. 'There's enough of 'em in these times to
carry off any extras whatsoever.'

'And it will save Bob's feelings wonderfully. And they won't know that
the dinner was got for another sort of wedding and another sort of
guests; so you'll have their good-will for nothing.'

The miller smiled at the subtlety of the view. 'That can hardly be
called fair,' he said. 'Still, I did mean some of it for them, for the
friends we meant to ask would not have cleared all.'

Upon the whole the idea pleased him well, particularly when he noticed
the forlorn look of his sailor son as he walked about the place, and
pictured the inevitably jarring effect of fiddles and tambourines upon
Bob's shattered nerves at such a crisis, even if the notes of the former
were dulled by the application of a mute, and Bob shut up in a distant
bedroom--a plan which had at first occurred to him. He therefore told
Bob that the surcharged larder was to be emptied by the charitable
process above alluded to, and hoped he would not mind making himself
useful in such a good and gloomy work. Bob readily fell in with the
scheme, and it was at once put in hand and the tables spread.

The alacrity with which the substituted wedding was carried out, seemed
to show that the worthy pair of neighbours would have joined themselves
into one long ago, had there previously occurred any domestic incident
dictating such a step as an apposite expedient, apart from their personal
wish to marry.

The appointed morning came, and the service quietly took place at the
cheerful hour of ten, in the face of a triangular congregation, of which
the base was the front pew, and the apex the west door. Mrs. Garland
dressed herself in the muslin shawl like Queen Charlotte's, that Bob had
brought home, and her best plum-coloured gown, beneath which peeped out
her shoes with red rosettes. Anne was present, but she considerately
toned herself down, so as not to too seriously damage her mother's
appearance. At moments during the ceremony she had a distressing sense
that she ought not to be born, and was glad to get home again.

The interest excited in the village, though rea