Part 5 (1/2)

He's a pretty young man, and I felt sorry for him when Miss Bray snapped so. I certainly did.

”My overalls are my working-pants,” he said, real meek-like, and his voice was trembling so I thought he was going to cry. ”It's very strange that in a place like this a man's clothes are not safe. I thought--”

”Well, you had no business thinking. Next time keep your pants on.” And Miss Bray, who's good on a bluff, pretended like she had been truly injured, and the poor little painter sat down.

Presently his face changed, as if a thought had come into his mind from a long way off, and he said, in another kind of voice:

”I beg your pardon, Miss Bray. I believe I know who done it. It's a friend of mine who tries to be funny every now and then, and calls it joking. I'll choke his liver out of him!” And he settled himself on the woodpile to wait until dark before he went home.

If anybody thinks that wedding was slumpy, they think wrong. It was thrilly. When the bride and groom and the bridesmaids came in, all the girls were standing in rows on either side of the walk, making an aisle in between, and they sang a wedding-song I had invented from my heart.

It was to the Lohengrin tune, which is a little wobbly for words, but they got them in all right, keeping time with their hands. These are the words:

1

Here comes the Bride, G.o.d save the Groom!

And please don't let any chil-i-il-dren come, For they don't know How children feel, Nor do they know how with chil-dren to deal.

2

She's still an old maid, Though she would not have been Could she have mar-ri-ed any kind of man.

But she could not.

So to the Humane She came, and caus-ed a good deal of pain.

3

But now she's here To be married, and go Away with her red-headed, red-bearded beau.

Have mercy, Lord, And help him to bear What we've been doing this many a year!

And such singing! We'd been practising in the back part of the yard, and humming in bed, so as to get the words into the tune; but we hadn't let out until that night. That night we let go.

There's nothing like singing from your heart, and, though I was the minister and stood on a box which was shaky, I sang, too. I led.

The bride didn't think it was modest to hold up her head, and she was the only silent one. But the bridegroom and bridesmaids sang, and it sounded like the revivals at the Methodist church. It was grand.

And that bride! She was Miss Bray. A graven image of her couldn't have been more like her.

She was stuffed in the right places, and her hair was frizzed just like Miss Bray's. Frizzed in front, and slick and tight in the back; and her face was a purple pink, and powdered all over, with a piece of dough just above her mouth on the left side to correspond with Miss Bray's mole.

And she held herself so like her, shoulders back, and making that little nervous sniffle with her nose, like Miss Bray makes when she's excited, that once I had to wink at her to stop.

The groom didn't look like Dr. Rudd. But she wore men's clothes, and that's the only way you'd know some men were men, and almost anything will do for a groom. n.o.body noticed him.

We were getting on just grand, and I was marrying away, telling them what they must do and what they mustn't. Particularly that they mustn't get mad and leave each other, for Yorkburg was very old-fas.h.i.+oned and didn't like changes, and would rather stick to its mistakes than go back on its word. And then I turned to the bride.

”Miss Bray,” I said, ”have you told this man you are marrying that you are two-faced and underhand, and can't be trusted to tell the truth?

Have you told him that n.o.body loves you, and that for years you have tried to pa.s.s for a lamb, when you are an old sheep? And does he know that though you're a good manager on little and are not lazy, that your temper's been ruined by economizing, and that at times, if you were dead, there'd be no place for you? Peter wouldn't pa.s.s you, and the devil wouldn't stand you. And does he know he's buying a pig in a bag, and that the best wedding present he could give you would be a set of new teeth? And will you promise to stop pink powder and clean your finger-nails every day? And--”