Nell’s wedding was a shorn affair. Her father was, of course, unable to come and give her away, and she had to go up the aisle on the arm of a shuffling and miserable Harry, to be finally disposed of by Mrs. Beatup, who was full of doubts as to the legality of a marriage thus officiated. Ivy could not get another day off, so had been obliged to content herself with sending Nell a silver-plated cruet and a rather tactless message to “come to her if ever she felt things going a bit wrong.” Thyrza was not present, either. She had mended slowly, in spite of the joy of her little son, and felt unequal to the fag and excitement of a wedding, either socially or ecclesiastically. The gaps were completed by the absence of Mr. Poullett-Smith, who was still away on his honeymoon. He was expected back next week, and it was considered locally that Nell and Kadwell would have shown a more becoming spirit if they had waited for his ministrations. No one guessed that it was just this chance of being married in the curate’s absence which had finally dropped the balance, and made Nell give way to her lover’s entreaties and make him happy at once. After the ceremony there was a breakfast at Worge, and that too was shorn. There had been no Ivy to help Mrs. Beatup with the cooking, and trug-faced Ellen had burnt the cake, which was not only sugarless, as Tom’s had been, but without peel or plums. “Might as well eat bread and call it caake,” said Mrs. Beatup drearily. “They both taaste lik calf-meal.” There was no butter, as butter did not pay at its present price, and was no longer made at Worge. Some greenish margarine had been Ellen’s reward for standing two hours outside the grocer’s in Senlac, but the cake had swallowed it all up, and wanted more, judging by its splintering behaviour under the teeth. To balance these scarcities there was tinned salmon and tinned crab and tinned lobster—also two bottles of wine, left over from Tom’s wedding, and watered to make them go further. “This is wot you might call a War wedding,” said Mrs. Beatup. “Nell, I’m unaccountable glad you got married in church—if it had bin a chapel marriage on the top of this”—and she waved her hand over the table—“I’d never quite feel as you wur praaperly wed.” As a further counterblast to irregularity she had insisted on Nell’s being married in white satin, with a stiff white veil like a meat-safe bound over her hair with a wreath of artificial orange-blossom. She looked very pretty, with a becoming flush in the thick pallor of her skin. Her eyes were bright and restless, and she breathed quickly, so that her little pearl-and-turquoise locket, “the gift of the bridegroom,” heaved under her transparencies—she was too shrinking and modest to have her gown cut low—like a shallop on a wave. She scarcely spoke during the meal, but sat twisting her wedding-ring and staring at her husband—following each movement with her eyes, apparently unable to look away from him.