“Feeder,” replied Mr. Toots gravely, “the fact is, that there were several circumstances which prevented me from communicating with you until after my marriage had been solemnised. In the first place, I had made a perfect Brute of myself to you, on the subject of Miss Dombey; and I felt that if you were asked to any wedding of mine, you would naturally expect that it was with Miss Dombey, which involved explanations, that upon my word and honour, at that crisis, would have knocked me completely over. In the second place, our wedding was strictly private; there being nobody present but one friend of myself and Mrs. Toots’s, who is a Captain in—I don’t exactly know in what,” said Mr. Toots, “but it’s of no consequence. I hope, Feeder, that in writing a statement of what had occurred before Mrs. Toots and myself went abroad upon our foreign tour, I fully discharged the offices of friendship.”
“Toots, my boy,” said Mr. Feeder, shaking his hands, “I was joking.”
“And now, Feeder,” said Mr. Toots, “I should be glad to know what you think of my union.”
“Capital!” returned Mr. Feeder.
“You think it’s capital, do you, Feeder?” said Mr. Toots solemnly. “Then how capital must it be to Me! For you can never know what an extraordinary woman that is.”
Mr. Feeder was willing to take it for granted. But Mr. Toots shook his head, and wouldn’t hear of that being possible.
“You see,” said Mr. Toots, “what I wanted in a wife was—in short, was sense. Money, Feeder, I had. Sense I—I had not, particularly.”
Mr. Feeder murmured, “Oh, yes, you had, Toots!” But Mr. Toots said:
“No, Feeder, I had not. Why should I disguise it? I had not. I knew that sense was There,” said Mr. Toots, stretching out his hand towards his wife, “in perfect heaps. I had no relation to object or be offended, on the score of station; for I had no relation. I have never had anybody belonging to me but my guardian, and him, Feeder, I have always considered as a Pirate and a Corsair. Therefore, you know it was not likely,” said Mr. Toots, “that I should take his opinion.”
“No,” said Mr. Feeder.
“Accordingly,” resumed Mr. Toots, “I acted on my own. Bright was the day on which I did so! Feeder! Nobody but myself can tell what the capacity of that woman’s mind is. If ever the Rights of Women, and all that kind of thing, are properly attended to, it will be through her powerful intellect.—Susan, my dear!” said Mr. Toots, looking abruptly out of the window-curtains, “pray do not exert yourself!”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Toots, “I was only talking.”
“But, my love,” said Mr. Toots, “pray do not exert yourself. You really must be careful. Do not, my dear Susan, exert yourself. She’s so easily excited,” said Mr. Toots, apart to Mrs. Blimber, “and then she forgets the medical man altogether.”
Mrs. Blimber was impressing on Mrs. Toots the necessity of caution, when Mr. Feeder, B.A., offered her his arm, and led her down to the carriages that were waiting to go to church. Doctor Blimber escorted Mrs. Toots. Mr. Toots escorted the fair bride, around whose lambent spectacles two gauzy little bridesmaids fluttered like moths. Mr. Feeder’s brother, Mr. Alfred Feeder, M.A., had already gone on, in advance, to assume his official functions.
The ceremony was performed in an admirable manner. Cornelia, with her crisp little curls, “went in,” as the Chicken might have said, with great composure; and Doctor Blimber gave her away, like a man who had quite made up his mind to it. The gauzy little bridesmaids appeared to suffer most. Mrs. Blimber was affected, but gently so; and told the Reverend Mr. Alfred Feeder, M.A., on the way home, that if she could only have seen Cicero in his retirement at Tusculum, she would not have had a wish, now, ungratified.
There was a breakfast afterwards, limited to the same small party; at which the spirits of Mr. Feeder, B.A., were tremendous, and so communicated themselves to Mrs. Toots that Mr. Toots was several times heard to observe, across the table, “My dear Susan, don’t exert yourself!” The best of it was, that Mr. Toots felt it incumbent on him to make a speech; and in spite of a whole code of telegraphic dissuasions from Mrs. Toots, appeared on his legs for the first time in his life.
“I really,” said Mr. Toots, “in this house, where whatever was done to me in the way of—of any mental confusion sometimes—which is of no consequence and I impute to nobody—I was always treated like one of Doctor Blimber’s family, and had a desk to myself for a considerable period—can—not—allow—my friend Feeder to be—”
Mrs. Toots suggested “married.”
“It may not be inappropriate to the occasion, or altogether uninteresting,” said Mr. Toots with a delighted face, “to observe that my wife is a most extraordinary woman, and would do this much better than myself—allow my friend Feeder to be married—especially to—”
Mrs. Toots suggested “to Miss Blimber.”
“To Mrs. Feeder, my love!” said Mr. Toots, in a subdued tone of private discussion: “ ‘whom God hath joined,’ you know, ‘let no man’—don’t you know? I cannot allow my friend Feeder to be married—especially to Mrs. Feeder—without proposing their—their—Toasts; and may,” said Mr. Toots, fixing his eyes on his wife, as if for inspiration in a high flight, “may the torch of Hymen be the beacon of joy, and may the flowers we have this day strewed in their path, be the—the banishers of—of gloom!”
Doctor Blimber, who had a taste for metaphor, was pleased with this, and said, “Very good, Toots! Very well said, indeed, Toots!” and nodded his head and patted his hands. Mr. Feeder made in reply, a comic speech chequered with sentiment. Mr. Alfred Feeder, M.A., was afterwards very happy on Doctor and Mrs. Blimber; Mr. Feeder, B.A., scarcely less so, on the gauzy little bridesmaids. Doctor
