Composition Exercise 13

1. Composition Exercise 13 13. A wedding

2. 1. My neighbors are the Higgins and last Saturday was their daughter Lucy’s wedding day. • 2. Most of the guests at the wedding came from our neighborhood although some ofthem, who were relatedto thebridegroom’s family, had traveled over a hundred miles to attend, but however far they had come, they all arrived in plenty of time before the ceremony and had soon packed our local church to capacity.

3. 3. I had been helping Lucy on with her dress, which was made of a beautiful whiteorgandie and which her grandmother had worn when she had been a bride fifty years beforehand, so I was the last guest to arrive. • 4. The seat I managed to get wasin a pew at the back of church and bordered the aisle so I kept looking out of the corner of my eye, expecting to catch a glimpse of Lucy ready to make her way upthe aisle on her father’s side.

4. 5. It was not long before I saw her standingjust outside the church entrance, looking just as radiant as a bride is supposed to look, and taking care to pat her hair into place to prevent the wind from ruffling it. • 6. It did not surprise me to see that her father wasnot with her since I only supposed he had gone round to the vestry to inform the vicar of their arrival, but at the stroke of eleven Lucy wasstill on her own and was faintly alarmed.

5. 7.After fifteen minutes had passed, it was obvious from the murmuring in the congregation that they were beginning to wonder if , in a suddenpanic, the bridegroom had decided against gettingmarried, or if he might have had an accident as he had beencoming to the church. • 8. I could not understand what had causedthe delay, since having stayed overnight with somefriends of Lucy’s family, the bridegroom could hardly have failed to get to the church in time and I knew him not to be the sort of young man who would let a girl down.

6. 9. A rather red-faced Mr. Higgins eventually took his daughter up the aisle, thus putting an end to my own and other people’s speculations and the ceremony went off without anything else happening to spoil it. • 10. Only later, when we were at the reception,did we learn that the wedding ring had been lost and that Lucy was now wearing the ring which like her dress had belongedto her grand mother.