Martin said it reminded him of home;
and always, before they returned, they went up the willow path to the
mill, or down to the shanty at the Drowned Lands, for a visit to John
McIntyre.

But while Miss Arabella walked about idly in her radiant dream, Susan
was slaving day and night. For the wedding she and her eldest daughter
were planning was to be no small affair. Bella wanted her aunt to be
married in the church. She knew just how a church wedding should be
conducted, and Wes Long had promised to write a piece about it and have
it printed in the Lakeview papers. One sentence was already composed,
"The happy party then repaired to the house of the bride's brother,
where a sumptuous _recherche dejeuner_ was served." Bella was almost
alarmed at the high-sounding words, but Wes said they were used in all
accounts of high-class weddings. There were two obstacles, however, in
the way of a church wedding. One was the bridegroom, and the other the
bride's brother. Martin announced that if Bella came any such tall
doings as that over her old uncle, he'd kick over the traces, and he
and Arabella would elope. Here he winked solemnly, and inquired if she
didn't suppose Arabella was just the sort that would run away; and the
little lilac lady hung her head and blushed, and Bella wondered why
Elsie Cameron should laugh so. Then there was the blacksmith himself.
Like most yielding husbands, he was subject to unaccountable fits of
stubbornness, and seized this inopportune occasion to indulge in one.
He positively refused, he announced dourly, even in the face of Susan's
demands, to make an Uncle Tom's Cabin parade of himself and Arabella by
going trolloping up the church aisle with her. He regarded the whole
scheme as one of the many indications of feminine folly, and confided
mournfully to the bridegroom that he might as well give up, for Susan's
latest dodge was to make them have their dinner out in the yard, like
the pigs. Why folks that had a decent roof over their heads should
turn themselves out of house and home to eat like the tinkers, was past
his knowledge. But you could never tell what weemen would be up to
next. Why, when he was at Neeag'ra Falls----

But while he poured out his complaints his wife went on with her
preparations, all unheeding. Though the church parade had to be given
up for a house wedding, she saw to it that its grandeur was no whit
diminished. The ceremony was to be performed in Arabe