Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/50

42 and in our usual hiding-place in the organ-loft. Mr. Skipworth was already waiting before the altar, book in hand, and looking decidedly cross, when the bride and bridegroom came in, followed by a few people. We couldn't see their faces, but theerthere [sic] seemed something very wrong about the bridegroom's back, for he was lurching, tripping and rolling from side to side, and strange to say, the bride, a stout and buxom young woman, was supporting him! They reached the altar, and Mr. Skipworth began to read the service, but when it became necessary for the young man to make his vows, nothing was heard but a series of hiccoughs; and although the bride pinched and shook and whispered him energetically, no responses were forthcoming, and in another minute he had fallen an inert mass upon the chancel floor.

"Oh my!" exclaimed Jack in high glee, "he's drunk!"

Mr. Skipworth shut the book in disgust and walked away; but the intrepid bride, with no trace of anger, raised her man, and with her friend's assistance conveyed him to the door.

We followed the couple to the village as far as we dared, and during the day contrived to get posted up as to the latest particulars. At noon he was fast asleep, with his head on the bride's lap; at three he was recovering, and calling loudly for beer; at five he was locked up by her friends for safety; at nine he was sitting with his head in a basin of cold water, forced thereto by the same in hopes of enabling him to go to church on the morrow. And their indefatigable efforts have been rewarded, for this morning he came up to time, and was able to make his vows, if somewhat unsteadily, at least audibly. The bride's beaming face was a study as she bore her swinish-sulky mate away. Truly matrimony must have had charms for her.

It is a never-ending puzzle to Jack and me how people can like being married. Dorley has a wife, a very fine woman, who beats him, and of whom he is intensely proud. Once she rather overdid