“Ah, thin, see till our broth av a b’hoy! Sure, don’t his face shine like the morning starr itself?” whispered Dandy to his companion. Longman looked and saw Ran, with his brow radiant with frank happiness which he did not think of suppressing. “Whish! Look down the aisle itself! There comes me swate swishter! Och! what an angel!” murmured Mike. Longman looked and smiled. Dandy turned his head and caught his breath. He had never in all his life seen anything half so lovely as little Judy in her bridal array. And yet her dress was simple enough. She wore a plain white silk, trained; a white tulle overskirt, looped with sprays of orange buds; a white tulle veil, fastened above her curly, black hair with sprigs of orange buds; and on her neck and arms a set of pearls given her by Ran. Her eyes were cast down until their long, sweeping, black lashes lay on her slightly flushed oval cheeks. She came slowly, leaning on the arm of Samuel Walling, who was to give her away. No doubt her brother would have been asked to perform this service, but that he was under age. And, besides, he would have shrunk from the honor of taking so conspicuous a part in the ceremony, since he would not even officiate as groomsman. Behind them came Mrs. Samuel Walling, in a superb suit of ruby brocaded velvet, with turban to match. She was leaning on the arm of her brother-in-law, Mr. William Walling. The two clergymen advanced to the altar railing with open books in their hands. The bridegroom met the bride and took her hand; both bowed to the officiating ministers, and then knelt down on the hassocks before the altar. Their immediate friends drew around them. The company in the pews stood up. Mike bent eagerly, breathlessly forward. The ceremony began. It continued amid a breathless silence, unbroken except by the voices of the officiating ministers and responses of the kneeling pair before them, and the short reply of the “church father” in bestowing “this woman” upon “this man.” After the benediction was pronounced friends crowded around the newly wedded young pair with congratulations that were not merely conventional, but earnest, heartfelt. Mike crept out of his pew, glided easily through the crowd, and stood before his sister and brother-in-law, mute, unable to speak, still looking like a very shy schoolboy at his college exhibition. But Ran seized his hand and shook it heartily, and held it fast while he said: “Mike—dear boy—we were always brothers in heart, and now we are brothers in reality! Are you not going to embrace your sister? She is not less your sister because she is my wife, but more so, for she has married your bosom’s everlasting brother.” Mike then turned to Judy, who opened her arms and folded him to her heart in a warm embrace. Longman and Dandy hung back for a little while, and then the old man stood up and said: “I can’t stand it at all, at all! Sure, I must go and spake to the darlints!”