“_Never despar_,” he said to himself, as he jogged along, “never despar! Honesty, a bright watch-out, a hand o’ cards in your fingers and one in your lap, with a little grain of help from Providence, will always fetch a man through! Never despar! I’ve been hunted and tracked and dogged like a cussed wolf, but the Lord has purvided, and my wust _inimy has tuck a tree_! Git up, Button, you old, flop-eared Injun!” XXV. POLLY PEABLOSSOM’S WEDDING.[15] “My stars! that parson is _powerful_ slow a-coming! I reckon he wa’n’t so tedious gitting to his own wedding as he is coming here,” said one of the bridesmaids of Miss Polly Peablossom, as she bit her lips, and peeped into a small looking-glass for the twentieth time. “He preaches enough about the shortness of a lifetime,” remarked another pouting Miss, “and how we ought to improve our opportunities, not to be creeping along like a snail, when a whole wedding-party is waiting for him, and the waffles are getting cold, and the chickens burning to a crisp.” “Have patience, girls, maybe the man’s lost his spurs and can’t get along any faster,” was the consolatory appeal of an arch-looking damsel, as she finished the last of a bunch of grapes. “Or perhaps his old fox-eared horse has jumped out of the pasture, and the old gentleman has to take it a-foot,” surmised the fourth bridesmaid. The bride used industrious efforts to appear patient and rather indifferent amid the general restiveness of her aids, and would occasionally affect extreme merriment; but her shrewd attendants charged her with being fidgety, and rather more uneasy than she wanted folks to believe. “Hello, Floyd!” shouted old Captain Peablossom out of doors to his copperas-trowsered son, who was entertaining the young beaux of the neighbourhood with feats of agility in jumping with weights—“Floyd, throw down them rocks, and put the bridle on old Snip, and ride down the road and see if you can’t see Parson Gympsey, and tell him hurry along, we are all waiting for him. He must think weddings are like his meetings, that can be put off to the ‘Sunday after the fourth Saturday in next month,’ after the crowd’s all gathered and ready to hear the preaching. If you don’t meet him, go _clean_ to his house. I ’spect he’s heard that Bushy Creek Ned’s here with his fiddle, and taken a scare.” As the night was wearing on, and no parson had come yet to unite the destinies of George Washington Hodgkins and “the amiable and accomplished” Miss Polly Peablossom, the former individual intimated to his _intended_ the propriety of passing off the time by having a dance. Polly asked her ma, and her ma, after arguing that it was not the fashion in her _time_, in North Car’lina, to dance before the _ceremony_, at last consented.