most
irritated jerk, and seemed determined to keep them upon the girl by his
side.

As for the wedding ceremony itself--it was like all others. The women
looked exultant, and the men--the groom, the bride's father, the
groomsmen, and even Rev. John Dexter, had a sort of captured look and
went through the service as though they wished that marriages which are
made in Heaven were celebrated there also. But after the service was
actually accomplished, after the bride and groom had been properly
congratulated, after the multitude had been fed in serried ranks
according to social precedence, after the band on the lawn outside had
serenaded the happy couple, and after further interminable handshaking
and congratulations, from those outside, after the long line of invited
guests had filed past the imposing vista of pickle dishes, cutlery,
butter dishes and cake plates, reaching around the walls of three
bedrooms,--to say nothing of an elaborate wax representation of nesting
cupids bearing the card of the Belgian Society from the glass works and
sent, according to the card, to "Mlle. Lille'n'en Pense"; after the
carriage, bedecked and bedizened with rice and shoes and ribbons, that
was supposed to bear away the bride and groom, had gone amid the
shouting and the tumult of the populace, and after the phaeton and the
sorrel mare had actually taken the bride and groom from the barn to the
railway station, after the fiddle and the bassoon and the horn and the
tinkling cymbal at Morty Sands's dance had frayed and torn the sleep of
those pale souls who would sleep on such a night in Harvey, Grant Adams
and his father, leaving Jasper to trip whatever fantastic toes he might
have, in the opera house, drove down the hill through the glare of the
furnaces, the creaking of the oil derricks and the smell of the straw
paper mill through the heart of South Harvey.

They made little talk as they rode. Their way led them through the
street which is shaded and ashamed by day, and which glows and flaunts
itself by night. Men and women, gambling, drinking, carousing, rioted
through the street, in and out of doors that spilled puddles of yellow
light on the board sidewalks and dirt streets; screaming laughter,
hoarse calls, the stench of liquor, the muffled noises of gambling,
sputter of electric lights and the flash of glimmering reflections from
bar mirrors rasped their senses and kept the father and son silent as
they rode. When they had pass