Bridesmaiden

[…]; and so warmly did he share the partiality of Lady Mary and Lady Jemima for the gentle recluse, whom he persisted in calling “la belle au bois dormant,” that, when informed that though the funeral baked meats of the late Earl were not to furnish forth the marriage-table of his successor, the bombazine of the two noble spinsters was, in a decent time, to give place to bridesmaiden white, he was unable to resist a mild “hurrah!”

And when a little bridesmaiden, uncommonly like you, / Comes into church so trippingly, all dress’d in white and blue, / You’ll discover, as you reach the middle aisle, / Why they linger’d, linger’d, linger’d at the stile.

“But it will be a deception,” urged Mòr. “I shall have to appear as chief bridesmaiden, whilst I am a married woman.”

The Night wore all her starry gems of pride, / To be bridesmaiden to that peerless bride;

There were errands to be done, he said, but as these “errands” always took him over to the little island of Urk, where lived a certain pretty Olla Tronk, who was Jacqueline’s great friend and her chosen bridesmaiden, the sisters naturally teased him a good deal about them.

That night, therefore, I told my cousin of my plans, and she greatly astonished and dismayed me by saying that she, too, would go with me and be bridesmaiden.

And now, after all, here I had been married with ne’er a bridesmaiden at all!

Then turning to Mrs. Mummer, “And you smiling at her. Think you I want a bridesmaiden with a red nose?”