The church was packed for the wedding. Only the seats on one side of the central aisle had been reserved for the guests; by special request of the bride, the other side was kept for the villagers, first come, first served, with no distinctions whatsoever. Mrs. Comley was there, with Ernie, all new suit and hair-oil. Mrs. Birkin came a full hour and a half before the service, and secured a corner seat next the aisle from which wild horses could not have dragged her. The priest had said his say, the organist was thundering the wedding-march, the wedding was over, and the bride, her veil thrown back from her radiant face, was coming down the aisle on her proud young husband’s arm. Mrs. Birkin, tearful and exultant, stood in her place devouring the pretty spectacle with eager, kind old eyes. As the bride reached Mrs. Birkin’s pew she stopped, slipped her hand from the bridegroom’s arm, and turning, flung both her own, bouquet and all, round Mrs. Birkin’s neck. She kissed the old woman before the whole church and whispered loudly in her ear: "Mrs. Birkin, dear, that’s the most beautiful bonnet I ever saw." In another moment she was gone. The last pair of bridesmaids had passed, and after them, visitors and villagers alike thronged into the sunshine. Mrs. Birkin, her bonnet much awry, owing to the heavy bridal bouquet, strayed out with the rest in a sort of solemn rapture. She had been honoured above all other women on that great day. "Wot did ’er say to you?" asked Mrs. Comley, enviously, when they got outside. Mrs. Birkin laughed. "Bless ’er sweet face!" she exclaimed triumphantly, "if her didn’t go and think ’t was a bran’ new bonnet as I’d got on! I must ’a’ made un over-smartish, that I must." *II* *A PHILOSOPHER OF THE COTSWOLDS* It is possible that to the unobservant his great qualities were hidden: all that they saw in him was a tall, shabby-looking old man, who walked with that indescribable garden-roller sort of motion usually associated with the gait of those who minister to us in the coffee-rooms of hotels—an old man, who, professedly a jobbing gardener, looked like a broken-down something else. Frequently they did not even take the trouble to crystallise their doubt into a question, a sure and certain measure towards its solution. But there were those who saw beneath the surface, who were moreover privileged to have speech of him—and he was always very ready to converse, leaning on his spade the while, but with the air of one who only just tolerated such interruption.—these would find that here was one whose ideas were the result of reflection and observation, not mere echoes of the local press; or, as is sometimes the case in other and higher walks of life, those of the reviews or quarterlies.