dressed her, Mrs. Macdonald looking on, and Mawson fluttering about, admiring but incompetent.
"'Something old and something new,
Something borrowed and something blue,'"
Mrs. Macdonald quoted. "Have you got them all, Jean?"
"I think so. I've got a lace handkerchief that was my mother's—that's old. And blue ribbon in my under-things. And I've borrowed Pamela's prayer-book, for I haven't one of my own. And all the rest of me's new."
"And the sun is shining," said Pamela, "so you're fortified against ill-luck."
"I hope so," said Jean gravely. "I must see if Mhor has washed his face this morning. I didn't notice at breakfast, and he's such an odd child, he'll wash every bit of himself and neglect his face. Perhaps you'll remember to look, Mrs. Macdonald, when you are with him here."
Mrs. Macdonald smiled at Jean's maternal tone.
"I've brought up four boys," she said, "so I ought to know something of their ways. It will be like old times to have Jock and Mhor to look after."
Mhor went in the car with Jean and Pamela and Mrs. Macdonald. The others had gone on in Lord Bidborough's car, as Mr. Macdonald wanted to see the vicar before the service. The vicar had asked Jean about the music, saying that the village schoolmistress who was also the organist, was willing to play. "I don't much like 'The Voice that breathed o'er Eden,'" Jean told him, "but anything else would be very nice. It is so very kind of her to play."
Mhor mourned all the way to church about Peter being left behind. "There's poor Peter who is so fond of marriages—he goes to them all in Priorsford—tied up in the yard; and he knows how to behave in a church."
"It's a good deal more than you do," Mrs. Macdonald told him. "You're never still for one moment. I know of at least one person who has had to change his seat because of you. He said he got no good of the sermon watching you bobbing about."
"It's because I don't care about sermons," Mhor replied, and relapsed into dignified silence—a silence sweetened by a large chocolate poked at him by Jean.
They walked through the churchyard with its quiet sleepers, into the cool church where David was waiting to give his sister away. Some of the village women, with little girls in clean pinafores clinging to their skirts, came shyly in after them and sat down at the door. Lord Bidborough, waiting for his bride, saw her come through the doorway winged like Mercury, smiling back at the children following … then her eyes met his.
The first thing that Jean became aware of was that Mr. Macdonald was reading her own chapter.
"The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them: and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose….
"And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The Way of Holiness: the unclean shall not pass over it: but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein….
"No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there.
"And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."
The schoolmistress had played the wedding march from Lohengrin, and was prepared to play Mendelssohn as the party left the church, but when the service was over Mrs. Macdonald whispered fiercely in Jean's ear, "You can't be married without 'O God of Bethel,'" and ousting the schoolmistress from her place at the organ she struck the opening notes.
They knew it by heart—Jean and Davie and Jock and Mhor and Lewis Elliot—and they sang it with the unction with which one sings the songs of Zion by Babylon's streams.
"Through each perplexing path of life
Our wandering footsteps guide;
Give us each day our daily bread,
And raiment fit provide.
O spread Thy covering wings around
Till all our wanderings cease,
And at our Father's loved abode
Our souls arrive in peace."
Out in the sunshine, among the blossoms, Jean stood with her husband and was kissed and blessed.
"Jean, Lady Bidborough," said Pamela.
"Gosh, Maggie!" said Jock, "I quite forgot Jean would be Lady Bidborough. What a joke!"
"She doesn't look any different," Mhor complained.
"Surely you don't want her different," Mrs. Macdonald said.
"Not very different," said Mhor, "but she's pretty small for a Lady—not nearly as tall as Richard Plantagenet."
"As high as my heart," said Lord Bidborough. "The correct height, Mhor."
The vicar lunched with them at the inn. There were no speeches, and no one tried to be funny.
Jock rebuked Jean for eating too much. "It's not manners for a bride to have more than one help."
"It's odd," said Jean, "but the last time I was married the same thing happened. D'you remember Davie? You were the minister and I was the bride, and I had my pinafore buttoned down the front to look grown up, and Tommy Sprott was the bridegroom. And Great-aunt Alison let us have a cake and some shortbread, and we made strawberry wine ourselves. And at the wedding-feast Tommy Sprott suddenly pointed at me and said, 'Put that girl out; she's eating all the shortbread.' Me—his new-made bride!"
The whole village turned out to see the newly-married couple leave, including the blacksmith and three dogs. It hurt Mhor afresh to see the dogs barking happily while Peter, who would so have enjoyed a fight with them, was spending a boring day in the stable-yard, but Jean comforted him with the thought of Peter's delight at Mintern Abbas.
"Will Richard Plantagenet mind if he chases rabbits?"
"You won't, will you, Biddy?" Jean said.
"Not a bit. If you'll stand between me and the wrath of the keepers Peter may do any mortal thing he likes."
As they drove away through the golden afternoon Jean said: "I've always wondered what people talked about when they went away on their wedding journey?"
"They don't talk: they just look into each other's eyes in a sort of ecstasy, saying, 'Is it I? Is it thou?'"
"That would be pretty silly," said Jean. "We shan't do that anyway."
Her husband laughed.
"You are really very like Jock, my Jean…. D'you remember what your admired Dr. Johnson said? 'If I had no duties I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman, but she should be one who could understand me and would add something to the conversation.' Wise old man! Tell me, Penny-plain, you're not fretting about leaving the boys? You'll see them again in a few days. Are you dreading having me undiluted?"
"My
