When she came forth like a lily from the mould, Abel staggered backwards, partly in clownish mirth, partly in astonishment. He was so impressed that he got breakfast himself, and afterwards went and sandpapered his hands until they were sore. Hazel, enthroned in one of the broken chairs, fastened on Foxy's wedding-collar, made of blue forget-me-not.

Foxy, immensely dignified, sat on her haunches, her chin tucked into the forget-me-nots, immovably bland. She was evidently competent for her new role; she might have been ecclesiastically connected all her life. The one-eyed cat was beside her, blue-ribboned, purring her best, which was like a broken bagpipe on account of her stormy youth.

'Ah! you'd best purr!' said Hazel. 'Sitting on cushions by the fireside all your life long you'll be, and Foxy with a brand new tub!'

Not many brides think so little of themselves, so much of small pensioners, as Hazel did this morning. Breakfast was a sociable meal, for Abel made several remarks. Now and then he looked at Hazel and said, 'Laws!' Hazel laughed gleefully. When she stood by the gate watching for the neighbour's cart that was to take them, she looked as full of white budding promise as the may-tree above her.

She did not think very much about Edward, except as a protecting presence. Reddin's face, full of strong, mysterious misery; the feel of Reddin's arm as they danced; his hand, hot and muscular, on hers--these claimed her thoughts. She fought them down, conscious that they were not suitable in Edward's bride.

At last the cart appeared, coming up the hill with the peculiar lurching deportment of market carts. The pony had a bunch of marigolds on each ear, and there was lilac on the whip. They packed the animals in--the cat giving ventriloquial mews from her basket, the rabbit in its hutch, the bird in its wooden cage, and Foxy sitting up in front of Hazel. The harp completed the load. They drove off amid the cheers of the next-door children, and took their leisurely way through the resinous fragrance of larch-woods.

The cream-coloured pony was lame, which gave the cart a peculiar roll, and she was tormented with hunger for the marigolds, which hung down near her nose and caused her to get her head into strange contortions in the effort to reach them. The wind sighed in the tall larches, and once again, as on the day of the concert, they bent attentive heads towards Hazel. In the glades the wide-spread hyacinths would soon be paling towards their euthanasia, knowing the art of dying as well as that of living, fortunate, as few sentient creatures are, in keeping their dignity in death.

When they drove through the quarry, where deep shadows lay, Hazel shivered suddenly.

'Somebody walking over your grave,' said Abel.

'Oh, dunna say that! It be unlucky on my wedding-day,' she cried. As they climbed the hill she leaned forward, as if straining upwards out of some deep horror.

When their extraordinary turn-out drew up at the gate, Abel boisterously flourishing his lilac-laden whip and shouting elaborate but incomprehensible witticisms, Edward came hastily from the house.

His eyes rested on Hazel, and were so vivid, so brimful of tenderness, that Abel remained with a joke half expounded.

'My Hazel,' Edward said, standing by the cart and looking up, 'welcome home, and God bless you!'

'You canna say fairer nor that,' remarked Abel. 'Inna our 'Azel peart?

Dressed up summat cruel inna she?'

Edward took no notice. He was looking at Hazel, searching hungrily for a hint of the same overwhelming passion that he felt. But he only found childlike joy, gratitude, affection, and a faint shadow for which he could not account, and from which he began to hope many things.

If in that silent room upstairs he had come to the opposite decision; if he had that very day told Hazel what his love meant, by the irony of things she would have loved him and spent on him the hidden passion of her nature.

But he had chosen the unselfish course.

'Well,' he said in a business-like tone, 'suppose we unpack the little creatures and Hazel first?'

Mrs. Marston appeared.

'Oh, are you going to a show, Mr. Woodus?' she asked Abel. 'It would have been so nice and pleasant if you would have played your instrument.'

'Yes, mum. That's what I've acome for. I inna going to no show. I've come to the wedding to get my belly-full.'

Mrs. Marston, very much flustered, asked what the animals were for.

'I think, mother, they're for you.' Edward smiled.

She surveyed Foxy, full of vitality after the drive; the bird, moping and rough; the rabbit, with one ear inside out, looking far from respectable. She heard the ventriloquistic mews.

'I don't want them, dear,' she said with great decision.

'It's a bit of a cats' 'ome you're starting, mum,' said Abel.

Mrs. Marston found no words for her emotions.

But while Edward and Abel bestowed the various animals, she said to Martha:

'Weddings are not what they were, Martha.'

'Bride to groom,' said Martha, who always read the local weddings: 'a one-eyed cat; a foolish rabbit as'd be better in a pie; an ill-contrived bird; and a filthy smelly fox!'

Mrs. Marston relaxed her dignity so far as to laugh softly. She decided to give Martha a rise next year.

Chapter 17

Hazel sat on a large flat gravestone with Foxy beside her. They were like a sculpture in marble on some ancient tomb. Coming, so soon after her strange moment of terror in the quarry, to this place of the dead, she was smitten with formless fear. The crosses and stones had, on that storm-beleaguered hillside, an air of horrible bravado, as if they knew that although the winds were stronger than they, yet they were stronger than humanity; as if they knew that the whole world is the tomb of beauty, and has been made by man the torture-chamber of weakness.

She looked down at the lettering on the stone. It was a young girl's grave.

'Oh!' she muttered, looking up into the tremendous dome of blue, empty and adamantine--'oh! dunna let me go young! What for did she dee so young? Dunna let me! dunna!'

And the vast dome received her prayer, empty and adamantine.

She was suddenly panic-stricken; she ran away from the tombs calling Edward's name.

And Edward came on the instant. His hands were full of cabbage which he had been taking to the rabbit.

'What is it, little one?'

'These here!'

'The graves?'

'Ah. They'm so drodsome.'

Edward pointed to a laburnum-tree which had rent a tomb, and now waved above it.

'See,' he said. 'Out of the grave and gate of death--'

'Ah! But her as went in hanna come out. On'y a new tree. I'll be bound she wanted to come out.'

At this moment Edward's friend, who was to marry them, arrived.

'Now I shall go and wait for you to come,' Edward whispered.

Waiting in the dim chapel, with its whitewashed walls and few leaded windows half covered with ivy, his mind was clear of all thoughts but unselfish ones.