"Oh, but that woult not do. We will keep them all alive till you are married. It woult neffer do to disappoint them all when we are all looking forward to it here." "Very well then, see you all keep alive." "And you will come to old Mr. Hamon's funeral?" "H'm! I don't know. We'll see, Mrs. Carre. We'd sooner be at our own wedding, you know, than at anybody else's funeral." "They woult like it iff you woult. And he was a goot old man. They tell me to ask if you woult be pleased to come." "If they would like us to come we will come, Mrs. Carre," said Margaret. And so it came about that instead of kneeling before the altar that Wednesday they stood by the graveside. X The Red House and the cottage were centres--nay, whirlpools--of mighty activities for days beforehand. Mrs. Carre insisted on cleaning down the Red House from top to bottom for the home-coming of the bride, though, to Graeme's masculine perceptions, its panelling of polished pitch pine from floor to ceiling, in which you could see yourself as in a mirror, had always appeared the very acme of cleanliness and comfort, with the additional merit of a tendency towards churchwardly thoughts. But when he ventured on a mild remonstrance anent the necessity for so gigantic an upsetting, Mrs. Carre laughingly said, "Ach, you are only a man. You woult neffer see"--and whirled her broom to the endangerment of his head. For Margaret's honeymoon--that, is, such of it as she had not enjoyed before her marriage--was to consist of a change of residence from the cottage, and a walk up the garden and through the hedge of gracious Memories, to the wider--ah, how much wider!--as much wider and larger and more beautiful as wifehood at its best is wider and larger and more beautiful than maidenhood at its best--to the wider accommodation of the Red House. And Mrs. Carre was determined that it should be speckless and sweet, and fit in every way for the coming of so beautiful a bride. She had found them a young girl, Betsy Lefevre, a niece of her own, to serve as handmaid during their occupancy of the house, but insisted herself on acting as cook and general housekeeper. Miss Penny was to reside at the cottage for a week after the wedding, but was to go up the garden to her meals, and at the end of that time she was to join them at the Red House as an honoured guest. And the kitchen at the cottage, and the kitchen at the House, and several other kitchens in the neighbourhood, were baking gache enough apparently to feed a regiment, and as the day approached, roasts of beef and mutton, and hams and other substantial fare, were much in evidence. And the kitchens were thronged with ladies in sun-bonnets, which had originally been black but were now somewhat off-colour with age and weather, and all the ladies' faces were as full of importance as if they had been Cabinet ministers in the throes of a crisis.