to tell her, "Take another." But how absurd to-day to stick on a point of objection to the color of a coat!
At City Hall, they stood with clerks, with a streetsweeper, with an earringed groom of black, oily curls and beshawled bride, with a pallid pair of lovers, exceedingly frightened. An odd lot to carry photographed in your mind all your life. Jay knew he would see these people, at sudden moments, throughout his life.
"Now how'll we be married?" he asked Lida, when in their cab again. Nothing beyond the next, imminent step had they talked over; not even in the interminable drive to City Hall. One step—take it; now another—take it. They had their license.
"No church," said Lida.
"Minister?"
"Oh, pick one from the phone book; 'Piscopalian preferred, if I don't know him—and he's not on Staten Island or in Brooklyn."
Jay visited a cigar store and consulted a classified telephone directory. It was while there that suddenly he realized the need of a wedding ring; and he went out the back of the cigar store, found a jeweler's and purchased, guessing at the size, a platinum band.
He was standing beside Lida in a small, stuffy, livingroom, a minister with prayer book in front of him, and three women, two of whom would be witnesses, present. He said once, "I will" and repeated, after the minister, four or five words at a time, the till-death-us-do-part promise. So did Lida. Then they knelt, to please the minister. When they arose, they stood rather stupidly. They were married.
