“Mrs. Julia looked highly noble and sweet when all was over, like she had rescued an erring sister from the depths.  You could see she felt that the world would indeed be a better place if she could only give a little more time to it.

“We stood round and talked some after the ceremony; but not for long.  Aunt Mollie wound the clock and set the mouse-trap, and hustled us all off to bed so we could be up bright and early for the wedding breakfast.  You’d think she’d been handling these affairs in metropolitan society for years.  The women slept on beds and sofas, and different places, and the men slept out in the barn and in a tent Uncle Henry had put up or took their blanket rolls and bunked under a tree.

“Then ho! for the merry wedding breakfast at six-thirty A.M.!  The wedding breakfast consisted of ham and eggs and champagne.  Yes, sir; don’t think Aunt Mollie had overlooked the fashionable drink.  Hadn’t she been reading all her life about champagne being served at wedding breakfasts?  So there it was in a new wash boiler, buried in cracked ice.  And while the women was serving the ham and eggs and hot biscuits at the long table built out in the side yard, Uncle Henry exploded several bottles of this wine and passed it to one and all, and a toast was drunk to the legal bride and groom; after which eating was indulged in heartily.

“It was a merry feast, even without the lobster salad, which Aunt Mollie apologized for not having.  She said she knew lobster salad went with a wedding breakfast, the same as champagne; but the canned lobster she had ordered hadn’t come, so we’d have to make out with the home-cured ham and some pork sausage that now come along.  Nobody seemed downhearted about the missing lobster salad.  Uncle Henry passed up and down the table filling cups and glasses, and Aunt Mollie, in her wedding finery, kept the food coming with some buckwheat cakes at the finish.

“It was a very satisfactory wedding breakfast, if any one should ever make inquiries of you.  By the time Uncle Henry had the ends out of half the champagne bottles I guess everyone there was glad he had decided to drag Aunt Mollie back from the primrose path.

“It all passed off beautifully, except for one tragedy.  Oh, yes; there’s always something to mar these affairs.  But this hellish incident didn’t come till the very last.  After the guests had pretty well et themselves to a standstill, Dave Pickens got up and come back with a fiddle, and stood at the end of the grape arbour and played a piece.

“‘Someone must have supplied that wretch with another fiddle!’ says Mrs. Julia, who was kind of cross, anyway, having been bedded down on a short sofa and not liking champagne for breakfast—­and, therefore, not liking to see others drink it.

“‘Oh, he’s probably borrowed one for your celebration,’ I says.

“Dave played a couple more lively pieces; and pretty soon, when we got up from the table, he come over to Mrs. Julia and me.