Yes, a
most fashionable and a most distinguished and a most exclusive
wedding--there was no mistake about that.
No one had ever seen anything like it before; some hoped they
never would again, so great was the crush in the drawing-room. And
not only in the drawing-room, but over every square inch of the
house for that matter, from the front door where Parkins's
assistant (an extra man from Delmonico's) shouted out--"Third
floor back for the gentlemen and second floor front for the
ladies"--to the innermost recesses of the library made over into a
banquet hall, where that great functionary himself was pouring
champagne into batteries of tumblers as if it were so much water,
and distributing cuts of cold salmon and portions of terrapin with
the prodigality of a charity committee serving a picnic.
And then the heartaches over the cards that never came; and the
presents that were never sent, and the wrath of the relations who
got below the ribbon in the church and the airs of the strangers
who got above it; and the tears over the costly dresses that did
not arrive in time and the chagrin over those they had to wear or
stay at home--and the heat and the jam and tear and squeeze--and
the aftermath of wet glasses on inlaid tables and fine-spun table-
cloths burnt into holes with careless cigarettes; and the little
puddles of ice cream on the Turkish rugs and silk divans and the
broken glass and smashed china!--No--there never had been such a
wedding!
This over, Corinne and Garry had gone to housekeeping in a dear
little flat, to which we may be sure Jack was rarely ever invited
(he had only received "cards" to the church, an invitation which
he had religiously accepted, standing at the door so he could bow
to them both as they passed)--the two, I say, had gone to a dear
little flat--so dear, in fact, that before the year was out
Garry's finances were in such a deplorable condition that the
lease could not be renewed, and another and a cheaper nest had to
be sought for.
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