"In this room? Where? where? I don't see her," said the general, looking all around, then up, then down, as if he thought she might be seated on the cornice or hiding 2way under the table or the chairs.

May lifted her laughing eyes to Mr. Graham's in comical appeal: “They can't see through the millstone, though the hole in it is formidably large, Mr. Graham. You will have to introduce us, after all."

"With the greatest of pleasure," springing up with alacrity." Miss May Gilbert, otherwise 'Queen Mab'General Chandler; Miss Gilbert-Mr. Arthur Chandler." Bayonets and bombshells!" exclaimed the general, giving a jump as though one of the latter had exploded at his feet.

66

"May ?" cried Arthur; and amazement, pride, love, and self-ridicule were all blended in the word. "Well! I merit the cap and bells, if ever anybody did, for my stupidity. Intuition might have told me that it could be none other." And, taking both her hands in his, there, before them all, he pressed his lips again and again to her's as he added, “I can only say what I would have said an hour ago, when I had not the remotest idea that the laurel chaplet of Fame already rested upon the brows I would have surmounted with a diadem

'Oh, were I monarch of the globe,

With thee to reign,

The brightest jewel in my crown
Wad be-my queen!"

The doctor and the general enjoyed the little by-play vastly; Aunt Mary and Fay felt quite demoralized before the strange gentleman; and the dénouement was altogether as much of a surprise to Mr. Graham, though in a different sense, as it was to Arthur.

I

CHAPTER XXIV.

A WEDDING.

HAVE reserved one whole chapter for a description

of May's wedding. Story-tellers, as a general thing, take leave of their heroes and heroines just when they reach this interesting point, or else they slur it over in the most tantalizing manner, as though weddings were such commonplace, every-day occurrences that it were a waste of time and words to do more than casually state in general terms that one had taken place or was about to take place. Possibly, there is a uniformity in these affairs that makes the recounting of the particulars a tedious repetition, but May and Arthur were, as Sally Slocom said when she heard of their engagement, "Well matched, for neither of 'em ever was like other people." And this singularity in themselves extended to all that they did, and notably to their wedding, making it an exception in its way, and therefore worthy of more than passing mention.

"Happy is the bride the sun shines on," says the old saw; and if there is any truth in it, never were there more decided prognostications of a cloudless future than favored May on her nuptial morn.

If she had been the only one to have had a say in the matter, she would have been married quietly in the dear familiar living-room at home, with only their own relatives and a few of her and Arthur's most tried and trusted friends to witness the ceremony; but in this she was overruled.

"For myself, love, your wishes are law," said Arthur, "but father has certain ideas about what appertains inseparably to certain stations and certain occasions; and he has set his heart, it seems, on having everything conducted on the scale and in the style he deems befitting the union of his only son with 'a worldwide celebrity' and the daughter of an illustrious house that can trace back its lineage to the Norman Conquest." (This in sly allusion to Sir Godfrey.) “But, in all seriousness, I think we should humor him, for, Goodness knows, I've been the cause of enough sorrow and disappointment to him without crossing him now unnecessarily. Besides, in this instance my preferences rather tally with his, for on this day of days, which can never be ours but once, I would not hide my bride under a bushel, but would have all who so desire-Mrs. Grundy included—to gaze upon her."

So from far and near came those who were bidden, and there was not even standing room in the little church of All Saints' for a full half hour before the time set for the solemnization of the marriage-rite, while never within those walls had the words inscribed on the scroll above the entrance-porch been so well exemplified: "The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the Maker of them all.”

Scions of "the best families," notabilities of "Upper Tendom" fresh from Newport and Cape May, found themselves, o their intense disgust, jammed in between farm-laborers and rosy-cheeked maids-of-all-work. Chandlersville aristocracy was for once crowded in its ecclesiastical home by Checkerville democracy. Satins and diamonds and nodding plumes entitled their wearers for the nonce to no more deference or consideration than homespun cloth and hobnailed brogans; and Mrs. Dr. Hobart, née Gerty Gilbert, nearly fainted when Mike Murphy, in his eagerness to get a good view of the bridal cortége, unguardedly set a very

clumsy specimen of the latter right down on her voluminous train.

A white silk cord was stretched across the middle aisle, barring off ingress to the three front pews on either side. Up to this barrier Mrs. Leonard Gilbert and her daughter had swept, serenely confident of their right to pass it ɔn account of their near relationship to the bride, but only to be politely waved back by the usher, while at the same moment it was courteously lowered to permit a stout old negress, Chloe herself, to take her place in the very foremost seat of the enclosure.

Twice again, from their obscure position in the background, these ladies saw the same privilege extended—once to a tall, raw-boned woman in a marvellous Paisley shawl and flaring Tuscan bonnet garnished with piony-buds, who walked up the aisle, erect as a drum-major, at the head of three good-sized children, two girls and a boy, who followed bashfully in single file close in her wake; and again to a decrepit old man, shabbily dressed, led by a chubby little girl of some six summers, and who, from the whispered remarks of two women behind them, they learned were Gran❜ther Cody, the oldest inhabitant of Checkerville, and his little granddaughter Minnie, " as Mr. Chandler and his wife-to-be is so fond of."

"My dear, this is scandalous!" whimpered Mrs. Gilbert. "The colored cook and those low people preferred before us, their next of kin! And that boor sitting next to you, you say, is their ploughman! Where's Eustace? He must take us out of this at once; I wish we had never come. Oh dear! oh dear!"

"Sit down, ma, and don't make a show of yourself,” said her daughter testily. "It's too late to leave now, and we are no worse off than others. There are the Vandeveres of Madison Avenue away in under the gallery, and the De

Forests of Murray Hill are obliged to stand, as all the seats are filled. It is in very bad taste, of course, but the Chandlers can afford to be indifferent whether people are pleased at what they do or not; and there is no use in our making a personal matter of a slight that is offered to us in common with those as far above us as we consider ourselves to be above this vulgar crowd of work-people, and the merest nod of recognition from whom we could never hope to gain unless we do now through May. She is a feather in our cap; and if I were you, ma, I wouldn't be too exacting on the score of our relationship, or 'gush' overmuch toward her or any of uncle's family while she is by; for she has a way of turning upon one that's decidedly unpleasant" (Gerty had not forgotten the castigation she herself had received from her cousin's tongue); "and her attention once drawn to us, she might decide that the same terms which had hitherto existed between us and them should still be kept up. She is fully capable of it; and that would never do. For Eustace's sake, for all our sakes, we must ingratiate ourselves with Mrs. Arthur Chandler; and the only way to do it is to be as unobtrusive in the beginning as possible, until the 'dead past has buried its dead' by degrees. Then, when we are sure bygones are bygones, we can assert our claims of consanguinity and make long, informal visits at Bellehurst.-Mercy!" This sudden and seeming irrelevant exclamation occurred when Mike's elephantine foot came down with crushing pressure on the flounces of her dress.

The light arias with which the organist had been beguiling the interval of waiting burst without pause or interlude into the resonant peals of the "Wedding March;" the large assemblage was on its feet with a simultaneous movement; every neck craned, every eye turned, in eager expectation toward the broad centre aisle, along which slowly advanced the bridal procession.