So all the Beatups went to the Bethel, leaving Worge locked up and the yard in charge of Elphick. Mrs. Beatup wore her Sunday bonnet, the wheat-crop having been superseded, contrary to all the laws of rotation, by one of small green grapes. Both Ivy and Nell had new gowns, Ivy looking squeezed and unnatural in a sky-blue cloth, which together with a pair of straight-fronted corsets, she had bought at a Hastings dress agency—Nell pretty and demure in a grey coat and skirt, and one of those small towny-looking hats which seemed to find their way to her head alone in all Dallington. Mus’ Beatup, with Harry and Zacky, smelled strongly of hair-oil and moth-killer, and Harry had nearly scrubbed his skin off in his efforts to get out of it the earth of his new furrows. He was considered too young to be Tom’s best man, and the office had been at the last moment unexpectedly filled by Bill Putland. Bill, now a sergeant, was home on seven days’ leave, looking very brown and smart, and Polly Sinden, who, not having been invited with her parents to the breakfast, had vowed she would waste no time going to the chapel, suddenly changed her mind and appeared in her most ceremonial hat. The chapel was packed with Sindens, Bourners, Putlands, Hubbles, Viners, Kadwells, Pixes. Mrs. Lamb of Bucksteep was there, with Miss Marian, but as she had not thought it necessary to put on the elegant clothes in which she was seen gliding into church on Sundays, her presence was regarded as an affront rather than an honour; Mrs. Beatup would have dressed herself in her best for any Bucksteep wedding, and thought that the squire’s wife might have done the same for her. Also, she came in very late, and her entrance was mistaken for that of the bride by many folk, who shot up out of the pew-boxes, only to be disappointed by the sight of Mrs. Lamb’s faded, powdered features behind a spotted veil, and Miss Marian swinging along after her with a tread like a policeman. “I reckon my feet are smaller than hers,” thought Nell, “for all that I’m only a farmer’s daughter.” Then Mr. Sumption came out of the vestry, and stood under the pulpit to wait for the bride. He looked more like a figure of cursing than of blessing—black as a rook, with his thick curly hair falling into his eyes, yet not quite hiding the furrows which the plough of care had dragged across his forehead. There was a rustle and a flutter and a turning of heads, as Thyrza came up the aisle on the arm of the bachelor cousin who was giving her away. She wore a grey gown like a March cloud, and carried a bunch of flowers, and the congregation whispered when they saw that she had sleeked her feathery hair with water, so that it lay smooth behind her ears, which were round and pink like those of mice. “It didn’t look like Thyrza,” everyone said—and perhaps that was why Tom was so loutishly nervous, and nearly broke Bill Putland’s heart with his fumblings and stutterings.