Part Three Chapter 15 Wedding Bells

They rang first for Lord Hardy and Augusta Browne, who had intended to be married in October, but whose wedding was deferred until the second week in November, because, as Mrs. Rossiter-Browne expressed it, "Gusty's bridal trouses could not arrive in time from Paris." Everything pertaining to the young lady's wardrobe was ordered either from London or Paris, and could Mrs. Browne have done it she would have bought the Arch of Triumph, and, transporting it to Allington, would have set it up in front of her house and illuminated it for the occasion. She should never have another daughter marry an Irish lord, she said, and she meant "to make a splurge and astonish the natives," and she did.

She had a temporary ball-room built at one side of the house, and lighted it with a thousand wax candles. She had a brass band from Springfield and a string band from Worcester. She had a caterer from Boston, whom with her usual happy form of expression she called a "canterer." She had colored waiters in white gloves in such profusion that they stumbled over and against each other. She had an awning stretched from the front door to the gate, with yards and yards of carpeting under it.

"She had not been abroad for nothing, and she guessed she knew what was what," she said to Lord Hardy when he hinted that a plainer wedding would suit him quite as well, and that the money she was expending could be put to better purpose.