and brief, and yet sometimes so long and terrible in their consequences.
"Beloved, we are gathered together—" So he came to the old question,
"Do you, Philip?"
But the answer was snatched from the groom's lips
Sally, herself, apparently nothing but an automaton now, lovely though she was, could afterwards recount it—always between laughter and tears—so every detail of the incidents that followed must have been indelibly though subconsciously registered. For it was at this juncture that the gods of Laughter intervened, providentially, of course, for theirs is the wisdom of tears. But from that moment the dignity and solemnity befitting the occasion, and so far bravely upheld, were irretrievably lost.
Concerned as he was, Captain Fairwinds wanted to roar out in relieving mirth—he did afterwards, out under the stars. His own memory held nothing like it for a mixture of the sacred and profane, except possibly the Holy Week processions in the cathedral cities of old Spain,—the grotesque holy images, the jewelled Virgin dancing on the shoulders of the revelling marchers, the Macareros in gay-coloured, slitted masks, the kneeling throng, the drunken singers, the benedictions and Rabelaisian jests interspersed, the hymns, the clashing instruments—the whole discordant pandemonium. But in old world haunts one expects sometimes the sacrament to be tinctured with colourful ribaldry—in this cool austere shrine of the ancient Fathers—never!
