On the whole it will be admitted that Lady Leuchars resigned herself to the situation rather gracefully.

"I think, Betty," she was pleased to remark after Graham had gone off back to London, "that brewing has agreed with that young man. He is better-looking than he was, and he tells me that every penny will be cleared off the estate." "Perhaps that makes him appear better-looking, mother."

352

CHAPTER XXVIII.

WEDDING-BELLS-JOHN MARTIN.

It is a curious thing, curious but true, that whenever a parson either gets on his legs to make a speech, or sits down to write a letter or a story, people should not only always expect a sermon, but even be disappointed if a sermon does not come. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam "-stick to your last, friend cobbler; to your vocation, friend parson, they seem to say; do not trespass amongst the trivialities of life; talk to us of serious matters, and we will fold our arms in the good old style and either slumber or listen to you at our pleasure. But it must be preaching, mind; we do not expect everyday or society talk from a parson.

I am not by any means an orthodox type of parson myself, not at least in this matter of sermonising when I wish to write or speak of matters mundane. I am a poor preacher at the best of times; a poor preacher, I repeat, and-woe is me!— often a poorer practiser.

But I can keep a promise even when made in jest or in the enthusiasm of gratitude; and as that young Dick Loder vowed that, in return for his winning our grand cricket-match, I had promised to come and marry him, I kept my word: I came, I saw, I was conquered-conquered by the sweetness and charms of a young lady with the loveliest blue eyes and the loveliest flaxen hair that ever I did clap eyes upon. And that young

lady now may call herself Mrs Dick Loder, having been by me united in the bonds of holy matrimony with the very best cricketer who ever honoured our village-green with his presence. It was in no sense a grand nor a largely attended wedding, and under the circumstances it was curious that no less than four Oxonians of more or less my own standing were present besides myself-Dick Holmes, once of Trinity; Lisle, now Lord Leuchars; and Laurence Ferrier from Christ Church-the House, as the boys now call it; Balfour of Corpus, who once stroked the Eight, and might, if he wished it, have won any fellowship that was going. And I had some knowledge of all four men, with Holmes being of course intimate, having often met Balfour in Holmes's rooms, and being on speaking terms with the two Christ Church men, who commonly hunted in couples. How old we all look, to be sure, Tritons of age among all these young minnows! Half-way between the Tritons and the minnows there was at the wedding Lewis of Hilary's-probably he had some other College to start with-who, being a very great mathematician, is beyond words uncouth, and being beyond words uncouth, has every claim to be a great mathematician. What a contrast the man is to Laurence Ferrier, the Sphinx, as some men at Oxford used to call him, but a Sphinx, mark you, of courtly manner, of ready wit, of kindly heart, whom those who knew him best swore by, and those who knew him less well respected at a distance.

Well, we had done with the marrying, I myself acting as chief officiator, and Balfour, the bride's father, only assisting. I may call it a most unemotional ceremony, unless you are pleased to call radiant faces and soft smiles evidence of emotion. The chief bridesmaid might have challenged the bride herself in respect of beauty, an Ellen Douglas or an Isabelle of Croye supporting Rowena the Saxon.

I know that I am out of date myself, and that is perhaps the reason why I was glad, if I had to be at a wedding at all, to find myself once again confronted by the good old-fashioned wedding-breakfast-not wholesome, I grant you, for men like

Dick Holmes and myself, but invented in the days when an iron race had never heard of indigestion. I sat next to Holmes in a position where we commanded a good view of the bride as well as of the attendant beauty, who sat on the bridegroom's left hand.

And when we had eaten and drunken, Balfour of Corpus stood up, and I could see that each man and each woman of the party prepared himself or herself to listen to a sermon, with but one exception-for the bride kept her eyes firmly fixed upon her plate, and I seemed to myself to fancy that she was trembling. And then at the moment that all due arrangements had been made for the reception of a sermon, when Laurence Ferrier, sitting back in his chair, had folded his arms on his chest and fixed his eyes upon the ceiling as though preparing to count the flies, Balfour, a man of fact rather than of imagination, in his calm quiet way told us what sounded like a fairy tale.

"My Lady Leuchars, Lord Leuchars, ladies and gentlemen, you, who have honoured my daughter and my son-in-law with your presence here to-day, have a claim to know a few facts which I will shortly lay before you. Twenty-two years ago there died intestate in the north of England one Andrew M'Farlane, a man of great wealth. He died, as I said, intestate, and left no immediate heirs. It was brought before my notice by a friend here to-day that my dear wife was in all probability among those distant heirs for whom the Court of Chancery was advertising. I do not know that of ourselves we should ever have thought of prosecuting a claim to the money of a man with whom we had not even a passing acquaintance. We had enough to live upon in the way that we wished to live, and I am no believer in the theory that increased wealth will bring in its train increased happiness. But our friend was inclined to think otherwise: he urged upon us the fact that we had no right to allow the children who might come after us to grow up in comparative poverty through our refusal to avail ourselves of those claims of inheritance which the laws of the land

might recognise. He offered to take all the necessary steps to prosecute our claim, and in the very week that my dearly-loved wife died I was informed that the Court had awarded to her, as heiress in a third part, the sum of two hundred thousand pounds. Again, with my grief fresh upon me, I might well have forgotten the whole matter. I had lost earth's choicest blessing, the love and the sweet companionship of the wife of my heart."

As the speaker's voice trembled for a moment, there was the first sign of emotion in the room. Two or three of the ladies sobbed audibly, and though I hardly hazarded a glance in her direction, I could see that the pretty bride had frequent recourse to her handkerchief. Even Dick Holmes cleared his throat loudly, and I felt myself that, had I been called upon to speak, my voice must have been husky. But the thing that struck me most was the look of absolute bewilderment that came over the face of the bridegroom's elder brother, who had played the part of best man full manfully. First of all he glanced at the bride, and instantly withdrew his eyes when he saw that she was crying; and then I saw him lean forward and look down the table in the direction of Laurence Ferrier, who, having now counted the flies, had closed his eyes and might almost have been supposed to be asleep.

"But again my friend interfered. 'You must think of your child,' he said. The money in the eye of the law is hers. If you do not care to touch it, it must be stored for her future use. And so I yielded on the condition that he who loved my child from her cradle upwards, my dear friend and my dead wife's dear friend Laurence Ferrier, should undertake the charge of my little one's worldly wealth; and under his wise and prudent stewardship the capital sum has been considerably more than doubled."

Here Holmes created rather a welcome diversion in a way peculiar to himself, and having said what he had to say quite loud enough for two or three people near us to hear him, got very red in the face and hastily swallowed a glass of