The preparations for the actual wedding were full of difficulty. In the first place, Porstock knew nobody in England, and had forgotten to ask anyone to be his best man. When the omission was discovered, he quite cheerfully suggested his mechanic, and actually asked him: he was, however, a Catholic, and “wasn’t sure but the priests would read him out from the altar” if he consented, a possibility of which he seemed to live in permanent dread. However, a great friend of our family, Frank Hopgood (the College of Heralds _did_ take him back) consented to act on a rather slight acquaintance, which had sufficed to convince him that Porstock was “one of the very.” Then there was the question of where Porstock should stay on the night before the ceremony, since he could not stay with us—this tradition was one which my mother would not hear of departing from, although Mrs. Rowlands proved to her conclusively that it was a survival of marriage by capture. In the end, he stayed with the Combes, and I am afraid disappointed Lady Combe a good deal: she had expected him to be full of nervousness, and even tried, as far as her nature would permit, to rally him archly on his approaching happiness, but found him iron-nerved as usual. She said, for instance, that she supposed he would want to look his best for to-morrow (I fancy it must have been a bedtime hint), to which he replied that looking your best was nervous work while you were in the kissing and cuddling stage, but he wasn’t going to get rattled any about the aisle-walk. Altogether I am afraid he did not win golden opinions at The Pines. But after all, as he said, the point was to “get the parson busy,” and he had no patience with details. My mother insisted on “giving me away,” a pretty old custom which was even then falling into disuse.