SO THEY WERE MARRIED.

As Mrs. Tramlay remarked at an earlier stage of this narrative, June was as late in the season as was fashionable for a wedding. Thanks, however, to a large infusion of the unexpected into the plans of all concerned, Lucia’s wedding did not have to be deferred until after June. All the invited guests pronounced it as pretty an affair of its kind as the season had known, and the more so because the bride and groom really made a very handsome and noteworthy couple,—an occurrence quite as unusual in the city as in the country.

The only complaints that any one heard were from Haynton and vicinity. The friends and acquaintances of the Hayn family held many informal meetings and voted it an outrage that when such a lot of money was to be spent on a wedding it should all be squandered on New York people, who had so much of similar blessings that they did not know how to appreciate them, instead of Haynton, where the couple would sooner or later make their home; for had not Phil selected a villa-site for himself, on his father’s old farm?

No invitations by card reached Haynton, but Phil’s{258} pastor went down quietly to the city to assist at the marriage-service, by special arrangement, and Hayn Farm of course sent a large delegation, and the head of the family saw to it that none of the masculine members wore garments of the Sarah Tweege cut longer than was required to make a thorough change at a reputable clothing-store. As for Mrs. Hayn, her prospective daughter found time enough to assume filial duties in advance, and the old lady was so pleased with the change that ever afterward she was what the late lamented Mr. Boffin would have termed “a high-flyer at fashion.”

But there are souls who laugh to scorn any such trifling obstructions as lack of formal invitation, and one of these was Sol Mantring’s wife. She tormented her husband until that skipper found something that would enable him to pay the expense of running his sloop to New York and back; his wife sailed with him as sole passenger, and on the morning of the wedding she presented herself at the church an hour before the appointed time, and in raiment such as had not been seen in that portion of New York since the days when sullen brownstone fronts began to disfigure farms that had been picturesque and smiling. She laid siege to the sexton; she told him who she was, and how she had held Phil in her arms again and again when he had the whooping-cough, and yet again when he had scarlet fever, although she ran the risk of taking the dread malady home to her own children, and the sexton, in self-defence, was finally obliged to give her a seat in the gallery,............