Mrs. Lathrop was waiting by the fence, impatience written with a
wandering reflection all over the serenity of her every-day expression.
Susan only waited to lay aside her bonnet and mitts and then hastened to
the fence herself.

"Mrs. Lathrop, you never saw nor heard the like of this weddin' day in
all your own days to be or to come, and I don't suppose there ever will
be anything like it again, for Lucy Dill didn't cut no figger in her own
weddin' a-_tall_,--the whole thing was Gran'ma Mullins first, last and
forever hereafter. I tell you it looked once or twice as if it wouldn't
be a earthly possibility to marry Hiram away from his mother, and now
that it's all over people can't do anything but say as after all Lucy
ought to consider herself very lucky as things turned out, for if things
hadn't turned out as they did turn out I don't believe anything on earth
could have unhooked that son, and I'm willin' to swear that anywhere to
any one.

"Do you know, Mrs. Lathrop, that Gran'ma Mullins was so bad off last
night as they had to put a mustard plaster onto her while Hiram went to
see Lucy for the last time, an' Mrs. Macy says as she never hear the
beat o' her memory, for she says she'll take her Bible oath as Gran'ma
Mullins told her what Hiram said and done every minute o' his life while
he was gone to see Lucy Dill. And she cried, too, and took on the whole
time she was talkin' an' said Heaven help her, for nobody else could,
an' she just knowed Lucy'd get tired o' Hiram's story an' he can't be
happy a whole day without he tells it, an' she's most sure Lucy won't
like his singin' 'Marchin' Through Georgia' after the first month or
two, an' it's the only tune as Hiram has ever really took to. Mrs. Macy
says she soon found she couldn't do nothin' to stem the tide except to