"He gave her away. He could not have performed the ceremony in the parish church." "Do you mean that she was not married in her father's church?" "She was married in the parish church, one of the most beautiful places of worship I was ever in--a grand old edifice." "Do you mean that my son was married in an Episcopal church, at the very horns of an Episcopal altar?" asked Mrs. Campbell indignantly. "It was the most beautiful marriage service I ever saw. And the sweet old bells chimed so joyously, I can never forget them." "Was there a wedding breakfast?" asked Isabel. "About twenty guests sat down to a very prettily decorated breakfast table, and after the meal, Robert and his bride began their journey through life together. I have brought you some bride cake," and he took from a box in his hand three smaller white boxes, tied with white ribbon, and presented them. Mrs. Campbell laid hers unopened on the table without a word of thanks or courtesy, and Isabel and Christina followed her example. "There was a crowd at the railway station," continued Mr. St. Claire, "and the Blue Coat Boys met the bride singing a wedding-hymn. Robert gave them a noble check for their school." "I'll warrant he did. The more fool he!" "And the last thing they heard as they left Kendal must have been the church bells chiming joyfully--'_Hail, Happy Morn_'!" "Do you know where they went? Robert was not sure when he left Scotland." "I think I do, Mrs. Campbell. They had intended going through the Fife towns, and by old St. Andrews to Wick, and so to the Orkneys and Shetlands. But it was late in the season for this trip, so they went to Paris and the Mediterranean. I think they were right." "Paris, of course. All the fools go there!" "Well, Mrs. Campbell, Scotland is a bleak place for a honeymoon." "Mr. St. Claire, if it does for a man's home, it may do to honeymoon in. That is my opinion." "I don't agree with you, Mrs. Campbell. A honeymoon is a sort of transcendental existence, and a man naturally wants to spend it as nearly in Paradise as possible. There's no place like the Mediterranean for sunshine, and it is poetical and picturesque, and just the place for lovers." Failing, with all his willing good nature, to rouse any apparent interest in a subject he considered highly interesting, he felt a little offended, and rose to depart. But ere he reached the parlor door he turned and said: "I had nearly forgotten one very remarkable thing about the bride." "Let us hear it, by all means," said Mrs. Campbell. "I stayed a few days after the marriage, in order to visit Windermere and Keswick Lake with Mr. Newton--by-the-by, wonderfully beautiful spots, nothing like them in Scotland--and one day while waiting in his study, I picked up a book. Imagine my astonishment, when I saw it had been written by the bride."