The last days of 1884, however, brought an event that cast a glow of colour over the life of Paulina and the whole foreign colony.  This event was none other than the marriage of Anka Kusmuk and Jacob Wassyl, Paulina’s most popular lodger.  A wedding is a great human event.  To the principals the event becomes the pivot of existence; to the relatives and friends it is at once the consummation of a series of happenings that have absorbed their anxious and amused attention, and the point of departure for a new phase of existence offering infinite possibilities in the way of speculation.  But even for the casual onlooker a wedding furnishes a pleasant arrest of the ordinary course of life, and lets in upon the dull grey of the commonplace certain gleams of glory from the golden days of glowing youth, or from beyond the mysterious planes of experience yet to be.

All this and more Anka’s wedding was to Paulina and her people.  It added greatly to Paulina’s joy and to her sense of importance that her house was selected to be the scene of the momentous event.  For long weeks Paulina’s house became the life centre of the colony, and as the day drew nigh every boarder was conscious of a certain reflected glory.  It is no wonder that the selecting of Paulina’s house for the wedding feast gave offence to Anka’s tried friend and patron, Mrs. Fitzpatrick.  To that lady it seemed that in selecting Paulina’s house for her wedding Anka was accepting Paulina’s standard of morals and condoning her offences, and it only added to her grief that Anka took the matter so lightly.

“I’m just affronted at ye, Anka,” she complained, “that ye can step inside the woman’s dure.”

“Ah, cut it out!” cried Anka, rejoicing in her command of the vernacular.  “Sure, Paulina is no good, you bet; but see, look at her house—­dere is no Rutenian house like dat, so beeg.  Ah!” she continued rapturously, “you come an’ see me and Jacob dance de ‘czardas,’ wit Arnud on de cymbal.  Dat Arnud he’s come from de old country, an’ he’s de whole show, de whole brass band on de park.”

To Anka it seemed an unnecessary and foolish sacrifice to the demands of decency that she should forego the joy of a real czardas to the music of Arnud accompanying the usual violins.

“Ye can have it,” sniffed Mrs. Fitzpatrick with emphatic disdain; all the more emphatic that she was conscious, distinctly conscious, of a strong desire to witness this special feature of the festivities.  “I’ve nothing agin you, Anka, for it’s a good gurrl ye are, but me and me family is respectable, an’ that Father Mulligan can tell ye, for his own mother’s cousin was married till the brother of me father’s uncle, an’ niver a fut of me will go beyant the dure of that scut, Paulina.”  And Mrs. Fitzpatrick, resting her hands upon her hips, stood the living embodiment of hostility to any suggested compromise with sin.

But while determined to maintain at all costs this attitude toward Paulina and her doings, her warm-hearted interest in Anka’s wedding made her very ready with offers of assistance in preparing for the feast.