Page:The Cornhill magazine (Volume 1).djvu/387

 brokken t' neck o' t' journey, an' should be at the Grange i' no time." I could not resist the temptation to crawl to the opening, and look out; Anne and Sophy joining me. There we were on the crest of Binks' Wold: far as eye could see, one undulation of snow; the black horses, with their heads a little turned from the road, smoking in the frosty air, like four masked furnaces. Long Tom, with his lantern, stood at the leader's head, throwing a grotesque shadow across the whitened road, and John clumped up and down, with his pipe in his mouth, to warm his nose, as he said.

Foreman's "no time" proved to be full an hour and a half; and in that dusky interval, spite of our excited anticipations, we all began to feel drowsy. At last, Sophy declared, yawning, that we must be nearly there; and, looking out, she announced the tower of Rookwood Church, where Cousin Mary was married in the morning; upon which, we all brisked up, and became excessively wide-awake. The Grange was only a mile and a quarter further, and as Sophy held the tilt open, by-and-by we could see it; three long ruddy shining windows on the ground floor, and two in the chamber story, peeping out from amongst the great white trees. Another ten minutes, and we stopped at the gate; but before we stopped, we saw the house door opened, and, against the bright glow within, half a dozen or more dark figures appeared coming out to meet us.

"Capital, lasses! we were beginning to think Uncle Preston wouldn't let you come!" cried a jolly voice.

"He would have had hard work to keep some of us, Cousin David," responded Sophy, and, having extricated her limbs from some of her most cumbrous swathements, she proffered herself to be lifted out first.

I thought I was going to be forgotten, and carted away to the stables, for when Sophy and Anne were gone, the noisy group marched back to the house in double quick time, and the door was just being shut when Sophy shrieked out, "Cousin David, you've not brought in Poppy!" and the young giant tore down the path, pulled me out of the wagon, much bedazed and on the verge of tears, carried me roughly off, and plumped me down on my feet in the midst of the sonorous gathering, crying, in a voice enough to blow a house-roof off, "Who's this little body?"

The Babel that ensued for the next ten minutes, when everybody spoke at once to everybody else, each in a voice big enough for ten, united to the pricking sensation which I now began to experience in coming out of the frost into a thoroughly heated house, finished the prostration of my faculties, and I remember nothing more until I found myself with Anne, Sophy, and two strangers in a large bedroom, where a fire of logs blazed in the grate, and a wide-mouthed damsel was unpacking our white frocks. "Well, Cousin Mary, good luck to you!" cried Sophy, kissing the taller of the two strangers very heartily; "and you got all safely married this morning, I suppose?"

I looked, and beheld the bride. Never, to my recollection, had I seen a bride before, and I romantically anticipated a glorified vision, quite distinct in appearance from all other womankind; but I only beheld a large