Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

424 RAVENSHOE.
terous woman, dashed out, and caught him up, and actually got
him out of the church-door before he had time to fetch his breath
for a scream. Gus and Flora were left alone with me.
Flora had a great scarlet and gold church service. As soon as
she opened it, she disconcerted me by saying aloud, to an imaginary female friend, "1 My dear, there is going to be a collection;
and I have left my purse on the piano."
At this time, also, Gus, seeing that the business was well
begun, removed to the further end of the pew, sat down on the
hassock, and took from his trousers' pocket a large tin trumpet.
I broke out all over in a cold perspiration as I looked at him.
He saw my distress, and putting it to his lips, puffed out his
cheeks. Flora administered comfort to me. She said, " You are
looking at that foolish boy. Perhaps he won't blow it, after all.
He may n't if you don't look at him. At all events, he probably
won't blow till the organ begins; and then it won't matter so
much."
Matters were so hopeless with me that I looked at old Master
Evans. He had bent down his head on to the rail of the bench
before him. His beautiful daughter had been his only companion at home for'many years, for his wife had died when Jane was
a little bare-legged thing, who paddled in the surf. It had been
a rise in life for her to marry Mr. Charles Ravenshoe's favorite
pad-groom. And just now she had walked calmly and quietly
up the aisle, and had stopped when she came to where he sat,
and had pushed the Honiton-lace veil from her forehead, and
kissed his dear old cheek; and she would walk back directly as
Mrs. William Ravenshoe. And so the noble old privateer skipper had bent down, and there was nothing to be seen there, but a
gray head and broad shoulders, which seemed to shake.
And so I looked up to the east end. And I saw the two
couples kneeling before the clergyman. And when I, knowing
everything as I did, saw Charles kneeling beside Mary Corby,
with Lord Ascot, great, burly, brutal giant, standing behind him,
I said something whiqh is n6t in the marriage service of the
Church of England. After it all, to see him and her kneeling so
quietly there together! We were all happy enough that day.
But I don't think any one was much happier than I. For I
knew more than any one. And also, three months from that
time, I married my present wife, Eliza Humby. And the affair
had only been arranged two days. So I was in good spirits.
At least I should have been, if it had not been for Lord
Charles Herries's children. I wish those dear children (not
meaning them any harm) had been, to put it mildly, at play on
the village green that blessed day.
WVhen I looked at Gus again, he was still on the hassock,.