30 TROTTY S WEDDING TOUR.

At last, one day, came Merle herself.

“T axpected you before,” said Trotty, reproachfully. Merle
said she had been very busy, and her mother would n’t let
her come. Trotty did n’t know, exactly, whether he believed
that or not, but he said nothing.

Merle looked very pretty that day. She had on a new
Scotch-plaid dress.

“We might get married, after all,” said Trotty. Merle
said she did n’t care, and so Nate came up and married them.
He stood on two crickets, and wore one of Lill’s dresses for a
clerical gown. After the ceremony, they had weak lemonade
and some sponge-drops, that were left over from Trotty’s
dinner.

“ When I get well, we ’ll go on our journey,” said Trotty.

“Time enough for that,” said Merle. She did n’t seem to
care much. She got vexed, too, because she was beaten at
dominoes afterwards, and went home. If I must tell the
truth, Trotty didn’t much care. She rustled about the room
and tired him.

But what should they do with him? The better he grew,
the more of a Chinese puzzle it became, to find out. When
he was well enough to walk about on one foot and a crutch,
it was fairly distracting; he was in such a hurry to get
well and out to play, and in so much danger of being in
too great a hurry, and so of not getting out till nobody knew
when.

“Why, I’ll amuse him,” said Max, one day, when his