what was already arranged, were bustling about the lower apartments and
making matters, as they call it, "tidy."

"Them flowers look but poor things, after all," muttered an old crone,
whom our readers will recognize as Dame Darkmans, placing a bowl of
exotics on the table. "They does not look nigh so cheerful as them as
grows in the open air."

"Tush! Goody Darkmans," said the second gossip. "They be much prettier
and finer, to my mind; and so said Miss Nelly when she plucked them last
night and sent me down with them. They says there is not a blade o' grass
that the master does not know. He must be a good man to love the things
of the field so."

"Ho!" said Dame Darkmans, "ho! When Joe Wrench was hanged for shooting
the lord's keeper, and he mounted the scaffold wid a nosegay in his hand,
he said, in a peevish voice, says he: 'Why does not they give me a
tarnation? I always loved them sort o' flowers,--I wore them when I
went a courting Bess Lucas,--an' I would like to die with one in my
hand!' So a man may like flowers, and be but a hempen dog after all!"

"Now don't you, Goody; be still, can't you? What a tale for a marriage
day!"

"Tally vally!" returned the grim hag, "many a blessing carries a curse
in its arms, as the new moon carries the old. This won't be one of your
happy weddings, I tell ye."

"And why d' ye say that?"