As the crystal wedding was to take place on the twenty-fourth, the Christmas tree was deferred till the night after, and was not looked forward too by the children as anything very important.  They had had a tree, a Kris Kringle, or something of the sort, every year since they could remember; but a wedding was a rare event, and to be a bridesmaid was as great an honor, Dotty thought, as could be conferred on any little girl.

It was intended that everything should be as much as possible like the original wedding.  Mrs. Parlin was to wear the same dove-colored silk and bridal veil she had worn then, and Mr. Parlin the same coat and white vest, though they were decidedly out of fashion by this time.  Dotty was resplendent in a white dress with a long sash, a gold necklace of her aunt Eastman’s, and a pair of white kid slippers.  Johnny was to be groomsman.  He was a boy who was always startling his friends with some new idea, and this time he had “borrowed” a silver bouquet-holder out of his mother’s drawer, and filled it with the loveliest greenhouse flowers.

Until Dotty saw this, she had been happy; but the thought of standing up with a boy who held such a beautiful toy, while her own little hands would be empty ­this was too much.

“Johnny Eastman,” said she, with a trembling voice, “how do you think it will look to be holding flowers up to your nose when the minister’s a-praying?  I’d be so ’shamed, so ’shamed, Johnny Eastman!”

“You want the bouquet-holder yourself, you know you do,” said Johnny; “you want everything you see; and if folks don’t give right up to you, then there’s a fuss.”

“O, Johnny Eastman, I’m a girl, and that’s the only reason why I want the bouquet-holder!  If I was a boy, do you s’pose I’d touch such a thing?  But I can’t wear flowers in the button-holes of my coat ­now can I?”

The children were in the guest chamber, preparing to go down ­all but Prudy, who was in her mother’s room, assisting at the bridal toilet.  Susy and Flossy stood before the mirror, and Johnny and Dotty in the middle of the room, confronting each other with angry brows.

“Hush, children!” said Susy, in an absentminded way, and went on brushing her hair, which was one of the greatest trials in the whole world, because it would not curl.  She had frizzed it with curling-tongs, rolled it on papers, and drenched it with soap suds till there was danger of its fading entirely away; still it was as straight, after all, as an Indian’s.

“O, dear!” said she; “it sticks up all over my head like a skein of yarn.  Children, do hush!”

“Mine curls too tight, if anything; don’t you think so?” asked Flossy, trying not to look as well satisfied with herself as she really felt; adding, by way of parenthesis, “Johnny, why can’t you be quiet?”

“Are you going to let me have that bouquet-holder, Johnny Eastman?” continued Dotty; “’cause I’m going right out to tell my mother.  She’ll be so mortified she’ll send you right home, if you hold it up to your nose, when you are nothing but a boy.”

“That’s right, Dimple, run and tell.”

“No, I shan’t tell if you’ll give it to me.  And you may have one of the roses in your button-hole, Johnny.  That’s the way the Pickings man had, that wrote Little Nell; father said so.  There’s a good boy, now!”

Dotty dropped her voice to a milder key, and smiled as sweetly as the bitterness of her feelings would permit.  She had set her heart on the toy, and her white slippers, and even her gold necklace, dwindled into nothing in comparison.

“Whose mother owns this bouquet-holder, I’d like to know?” said Johnny, flourishing it above his head.  “And whose father brought home the flowers from the green-house?”

“Well, any way, Johnny, ’twas my aunt and uncle, you know; and they’d be willing, ’cause your mamma let me have her necklace ’thout my asking.”

“I can’t help it if they’re both as willing as two peas,” cried Johnny.  “I’m not willing myself, and that’s enough.”

“O, what a boy!  I was going to put some of my nightly blue sirreup on your hangerjif, and now I won’t ­see if I do!”

“I don’t want anybody’s sirup,” retorted Johnny; “’tic’ly such a cross party’s as you are.”

“Johnny Eastman, you just stop murdering me.”

“Murdering you?”

“Yes; ‘he that hateth his brother.’”

“I’m not your brother, I should hope.”

“Well, a cousin’s just as bad.”

“No, not half so bad.  I wouldn’t be your brother if I had to be a beggar.”

“And I wouldn’t let you be a brother, Johnny Eastman, not if I had to go and be a heathen.”

“O, what a Dotty!”

“O, what a Johnny!”

By this time the little bridesmaid’s face was anything but pleasant to behold.  Both her dimples were buried out of sight, and she had as many wrinkles in her forehead as grandma Head.  Johnny danced about the room, holding before her eyes the bone of contention, then drawing it away again in the most provoking manner.

“If you act so, Johnny Eastman, I won’t have you for my bridegroom.”

“And I won’t have you for my bride ­so there!”

The moment these words were spoken, the angry children were frightened.  They had not intended to go so far.  It had been their greatest pleasure for several weeks to think of “standing up” at a wedding; and they would neither of them have missed the honor on any account.  But now, in their foolish strife, they had made it impossible to do the very thing they most desired to do.  They had said the fatal words, and were both of them too proud to draw back.  There was one comfort.  “The wedding will be stopped,” thought Dotty; “they can’t be married ’thout Johnny and me.”

The guests were all assembled.  It was now time for the bridal train to go down stairs and have the ceremony performed.  As the children left the chamber, uncertain what to do, but resolved that whichever “stood up,” the other would sit down, Johnny seized a bottle of panacea which stood on the mantel, and wet the corner of Dotty’s handkerchief.

“There is some sirup worth having,” said he; “stronger than yours.  Rub it in your eyes, and see if it isn’t.”

The boy did not mean what he said, or at any rate we will hope he did not; but Dotty, in her haste and agitation, obeyed him without stopping one moment to think.

Instantly the wedding was forgotten, the bouquet-holder, the anger, the disappointment, and everything else but the agony in her eyes.  It was so dreadful that she could only scream, and spin round and round like a top.

A scene of confusion followed.  The poor child was so frantic that her father was obliged to hold her by main force, while her mother tried to bathe her eyes with cold water.  They were fearfully inflamed, and for a whole hour the wedding was delayed, while poor Dotty lay struggling in her father’s arms, or tore about the nursery like a wild creature.

Johnny was very sorry.  He said he did not know what was in the bottle; he had sprinkled his cousin’s handkerchief in sport.

“She talks so much about her ‘nightly blue sirreup,’” said he to his mother, “that I thought I would tease her a little speck.”

“I don’t know but you have put her eyes out,” said his mother, severely.

“O, do you think so?” wailed Johnny.  “O, don’t say so, mother!”

“I hope not, my child; but panacea is a very powerful thing.  I don’t know precisely what is in it, but you have certainly tried a dangerous experiment.”

“I didn’t mean to, mother; I’ll never do so again.”

“That is what you always say,” replied his mother, shaking her head; “and that is why I am so discouraged about you.  Nothing seems to make any impression upon you.  If you have really made your cousin blind for life I hope it will be a lesson to you.”

While Mrs. Eastman talked, looking very stately in her velvet dress, Master Johnny was balancing himself on the hat-tree in the hall, as if he scarcely heard what she said; but, in spite of his disrespectful manner, he was really unhappy.

“I knew something would go wrong,” continued Mrs. Eastman, “when it was first proposed that you and Dotty should stand up together, and I did not approve of the plan.  What is the reason you two children must always be quarrelling?”

“She is the one that begins it,” replied Johnny.  “If I could have stood up with Prudy, there wouldn’t have been any fuss.”

“With Prudy, indeed!  I dare say you would be glad to do so now, you naughty boy.  Your kind aunt Mary suggested it, but I told her, No.  Since you have hurt Dotty so terribly, you cannot be groomsman.”

“O, mother!”

“No, my son.  She is unable to perform her part, and you must give up yours.  Percy will take your place.”

In spite of his manliness, Johnny dropped a few tears, which he brushed away with the back of his hand; but his mother, for once in her life, was firm.

I will not say that Johnny’s disappointment was not some consolation to Dotty, who lay on the sofa in the parlor with her eyes bandaged, while the wedding ceremony was performed.  If Johnny had been one of the group, while her own poor little self was left out, necklace, slippers, and all, she would have thought it unjust.

As it was, it seemed hard enough.  She was in total darkness, but her “mind made pictures while her eyes were shut.”  She could almost see how the bride and bridegroom looked, holding each other by the hand, with the tall Percy on one side, and the short Prudy on the other, ­the dear Prudy, who was so sorry for her sister that she could not enjoy taking her place, though a fairer little bridesmaid than she made could hardly be found in the city.

The same clergyman officiated now who had married Mr. and Mrs. Parlin fifteen years before; and after he had married them over again, he made a speech which caused Dotty to cry a little under her handkerchief; or, if not the speech, it was the panacea that brought the tears ­she did not know which.

He said he remembered just how Edward Parlin and Mary Read looked when they stood before him in the bloom of their youth, and promised to live together as husband and wife.  They had seemed very happy then; but he thought they were happier now; he could read in their faces the history of fifteen beautiful years.  He did not wonder the time had passed very pleasantly, for they knew how to make each other happy; they had tried to do right, and they had three lovely children, who were blessings to them, and would be blessings to any parents.

It was here that Dotty felt the tears start.

“I’m not a blessing at all,” thought she; “he doesn’t know anything about it, how I act, and had temper up stairs with Johnny!  Johnny’s put my eyes out for it, and I’ll have to go to the ’Sylum, I suppose.  If I do, I shan’t be a blessing so much as I am now!  To anybody ever!”

By and by aunt Eastman presented the bride with a bridal rose, which looked as nearly as possible like the one she had given her at the first wedding, and which grew from a slip of the same plant.  Dotty could not see the rose, but she heard her aunt say she hoped to attend Mrs. Parlin’s Golden Wedding.

“I shall be ever so old by that time,” thought the little girl.  “Fifteen from fifty leaves ­leaves ­I don’t know what it leaves; but I shall be a blind old lady, and wear a cap.  Perhaps God wants to make a very good woman of me, same as Emily, and that’s why he let Johnny put my eyes out.”

Here some one came along and offered Miss Dimple a slice of wedding cake, which tasted just as delicious as if she could see it; then some one else put a glass of lemonade to her lips.

“Has my little girl a kiss for me?” said Mrs. Parlin, coming to the sofa as soon as she could break away from her guests.

The gentle “mother-touch” went to Dotty’s heart.  She threw her arms about Mrs. Parlin’s neck, wrinkling her collar and tumbling her veil.

“Take care, my child,” said Mr. Parlin, laughing; “do not crush the bride.  Everybody has been coming up to salute her, and you must understand that she does you a great honor to go to you and beg a kiss.”

“It is just like you, though, mamma.  You are so good to me, and so is everybody!  No matter how naughty I am, and spoil weddings, they don’t say, ‘You hateful thing!’”

“Would it make you a better child, do you think, Dotty, to be scolded when you do wrong?”

“Why, no, indeed, mamma.  It’s all that makes me not be the wickedest girl in this city, is ’cause you are so good to me; I know it is.”

Mrs. Parlin kissed the little mouth that said these sweet words.

“And now that I am blind, mamma, you are so kind, I s’pose you’ll feed me with a spoon.”

“You will surely be taken care of, dear, as long as your eyes are in this state.”

“But shan’t I be always blind?”

“No, indeed, child; you will be quite well in a day or two.”

“O, I’m so glad, mamma.  I was thinking I shouldn’t ever go to school, and should have to be sent to the ’Sylum.”

While Dotty was speaking, Johnny came up to the sofa, and, taking her hand, said, in a tone of real sorrow, ­

“Look here, Dotty; I was a naughty boy; will you forgive me?”

As Johnny was not in the habit of begging pardon, and did it now of his own free will, Dotty was greatly astonished.

“Yes, Johnny,” said she, “I forgive you all up.  But then I don’t ever want you to put my eyes out again.”

“I won’t, now, honest; see ’f I do,” replied Master Johnny, in a choked voice.  “And you may have that bouquet-holder, to keep; mother said so.”

“O, Johnny!”

“Yes; mother says we can call it a ‘peace offering.’  Let’s not quarrel any more, Dotty, just to see how ’twill seem.”

“What, never!” exclaimed Dotty, starting up on her elbow, and trying to look through her thick bandage at Johnny.  “Never!  Why, don’t you mean to come to my house any more, Johnny Eastman?”

“Yes; but I won’t quarrel unless you begin it.”

“O, I shan’t begin it,” replied Miss Dimple, confidently; “I never do, you know.”

Johnny had the grace not to retort.  He was ashamed of his ungentlemanly conduct, and knelt before the sofa, gazing sadly at his blindfolded little cousin.  It was a humble place for him, and we will leave him there, hoping his penitence may do him good for the future.

As for Miss Dimple, we will bid her goodbye while her eyes are closed.  Be patient, little Dotty; the pain will soon be over, and when we see you again, you will be trudging merrily to school with a book under your arm.