CHAPTER XLI.

THE WEDDING.

Of the events which followed this scene we are happy to give our
readers more minute and graphic details than we ourselves could
furnish, by transcribing for their edification an autograph letter of
Miss Prissy's, still preserved in a black oaken cabinet of our
great-grandmother's; and with which we take no further liberties than
the correction of a somewhat peculiar orthography. It is written to
that sister "Lizabeth," in Boston, of whom she made such frequent
mention, and whom, it appears, it was her custom to keep well-informed
in all the gossip of her immediate sphere.

"My DEAR SISTER:--

"You wonder, I s'pose, why I haven't written you; but the fact is, I've
been run just off my feet, and worked till the flesh aches so it seems
as if it would drop off my bones, with this wedding of Mary Scudder's.
And, after all, you'll be astonished to hear that she ha'n't married
the Doctor, but that Jim Marvyn that I told you about. You see, he came
home a week before the wedding was to be, and Mary, she was so
conscientious she thought 'twa'n't right to break off with the Doctor,
and so she was for going right on with it; and Mrs. Scudder, she was
for going on more yet; and the poor young man, he couldn't get a word
in edgeways, and there wouldn't anybody tell the Doctor a word about
it, and there 'twas drifting along, and both on 'em feeling dreadful,
and so I thought to myself, 'I'll just take my life in my hand, like
Queen Esther, and go in and tell the Doctor all about it.' And so I
did. I'm scared to death always when I think of it. But that dear