“I do so wish the room below was ceiled,” said Fancy, as the dressing went on; “we can hear all they say and do down there.”

“Hark!  Who’s that?” exclaimed a small pupil-teacher, who also assisted this morning, to her great delight.  She ran half-way down the stairs, and peeped round the banister.  “O, you should, you should, you should!” she exclaimed, scrambling up to the room again.

“What?” said Fancy.

“See the bridesmaids!  They’ve just a come!  ’Tis wonderful, really! ’tis wonderful how muslin can be brought to it.  There, they don’t look a bit like themselves, but like some very rich sisters o’ theirs that nobody knew they had!”

“Make ’em come up to me, make ’em come up!” cried Fancy ecstatically; and the four damsels appointed, namely, Miss Susan Dewy, Miss Bessie Dewy, Miss Vashti Sniff, and Miss Mercy Onmey, surged upstairs, and floated along the passage.

“I wish Dick would come!” was again the burden of Fancy.

The same instant a small twig and flower from the creeper outside the door flew in at the open window, and a masculine voice said, “Ready, Fancy dearest?”

“There he is, he is!” cried Fancy, tittering spasmodically, and breathing as it were for the first time that morning.

The bridesmaids crowded to the window and turned their heads in the direction pointed out, at which motion eight earrings all swung as one:—­not looking at Dick because they particularly wanted to see him, but with an important sense of their duty as obedient ministers of the will of that apotheosised being—­the Bride.

“He looks very taking!” said Miss Vashti Sniff, a young lady who blushed cream-colour and wore yellow bonnet ribbons.

Dick was advancing to the door in a painfully new coat of shining cloth, primrose-coloured waistcoat, hat of the same painful style of newness, and with an extra quantity of whiskers shaved off his face, and hair cut to an unwonted shortness in honour of the occasion.

“Now, I’ll run down,” said Fancy, looking at herself over her shoulder in the glass, and flitting off.

“O Dick!” she exclaimed, “I am so glad you are come!  I knew you would, of course, but I thought, Oh if you shouldn’t!”

“Not come, Fancy!  Het or wet, blow or snow, here come I to-day!  Why, what’s possessing your little soul?  You never used to mind such things a bit.”

“Ah, Mr. Dick, I hadn’t hoisted my colours and committed myself then!” said Fancy.

“’Tis a pity I can’t marry the whole five of ye!” said Dick, surveying them all round.

“Heh-heh-heh!” laughed the four bridesmaids, and Fancy privately touched Dick and smoothed him down behind his shoulder, as if to assure herself that he was there in flesh and blood as her own property.

“Well, whoever would have thought such a thing?” said Dick, taking off his hat, sinking into a chair, and turning to the elder members of the company.