The rest of the ceremony passed off with due impressiveness, if we except a slight _contretemps_ arising from the behaviour of my daughter, who, suddenly remembering that the junior bridesmaid but one had not yet passed any opinion on her new shoes, suddenly sat down on the bride's train, and, thrusting the shoes into unmaidenly prominence, audibly invited that giggling damsel's approbation of the same. However, the ever-ready organ drowned her utterance with a timely Amen, and Dicky and Dilly completed the plighting of their troth with becoming shyness but obvious sincerity. Then came the inevitable orgy of osculation in the vestry, from which I escaped with nothing worse, so to speak, than a few scratches, despite an unprovoked and unexpected flank attack (when I was signing the register) from an elderly female in bugles, whom I at first took to be a rather giddy pew-opener, but who ultimately proved to be a maiden aunt of the bridegroom's. After Dicky and Dilly--the latter miraculously restored to high spirits and looking radiant--had passed smiling and blushing down the aisle, to be received outside with breathless stares by a large assemblage of that peculiar class of people--chiefly females of a certain age--who seem to spend their lives in attending the weddings of total strangers, we all got home, where there was much champagne, and cake-cutting, and bride-kissing, and melody from the aforementioned musicians in the garden. The presents--guarded with an air of studied aloofness by a wooden-jointed detective, clad in garments of such festal splendour as to delude several short-sighted old gentlemen into an impression that he was the bridegroom--played their usual invaluable part in promoting circulation among the guests, and supplying a topic for conversation. They certainly sparkled and glittered bravely in the library, where the blinds were drawn and the electric lamps turned on. (Kitty had seen to that. Silver looks so well by artificial light, and so, by a happy and unpremeditated coincidence, does the female sex.) The bride and bridegroom departed at last, amid a shower of rice, with that emblem of conjugal felicity, the satin slipper, firmly adhering to the back of the brougham. (Master Gerald had seen to _that_.) Then the guests began to make their adieux and melt away, and presently we found ourselves alone in the marquee, a prey to that swift and penetrating melancholy that descends upon those who begin to be festive too early in the day, and find themselves unable to keep it up till bed-time. * * * * * However, there was a recrudescence of activity and brightness in the evening, as the idea of a small dance had been proposed and carried, and the invitations issued and accepted, during the five minutes which witnessed the departure of the more intimate section of the guests.