The Reverend Ernest Moss conducted the affair, pronouncing Thaddeus and Priscilla man and wife just as a clap of thunder rattled the church shingles and caused some of the children to call out in fright. Afterward the wedding guests all splashed down Main Street to the schoolroom where two tables had been set with corn cake, apple butter, jars of honey, hung beef, apple pie, smoked hams, pickled cucumber, pickled oysters and buckwheat bread. Miriam Faulconer had sent six bottles of wine to her brother’s wedding feast and there were also two barrels of lemonade, a jug of beer and a vat of water. Blanche Sparrow, whose husband owned the dry goods store, made a vast pot of coffee on the church stove and ordered two of the Legion’s soldiers to carry it to the schoolroom where Major Pelham, dressed in his old United States uniform, made a fine speech. Doctor Danson then gave a humorous speech during which Thaddeus Bird smiled benignly on all the guests and even managed to smile when six of the schoolchildren, coached by Caleb Tennant, who was the Episcopal choirmaster, sang “Flora’s Holiday” in thin, rather unconvincing voices.

Afternoon school was necessarily less demanding than usual, yet somehow Thaddeus and Priscilla Bird managed to subdue the excited schoolroom and even persuade themselves that some decent work had been achieved. Priscilla had been appointed as Bird’s assistant, which appointment had been intended to release Pecker Bird to his duties in the Faulconer Legion, but in fact Bird still ran the school, for his military duties had proved happily light. Major Thaddeus Bird kept the regiment’s books. He compiled the pay lists, noted the punishments, and kept the guard rosters and commissary invoices. The work, he claimed, could have been adequately discharged by a bright six-year-old, but Bird was happy to perform it because, as an integral part of his duties, he was expected to pay himself a major’s salary out of his brother-in-law’s bank account. Most of the officers were receiving no pay, having private means, while the men were being paid their eleven dollars a month in newly printed Faulconer County Bank dollar bills, which depicted the town’s courthouse on the one side and had a portrait of George Washington and an engraved bale of cotton on the other. A legend printed across the bale of cotton read “States’ Rights and Southern Liberty. The Faith of the Bank is Pledged to Pay One Dollar on Demand.” The bills were not very well printed and Bird suspected they might easily be forged, which was why he took good care to have his own Legion salary of thirty-eight dollars a month paid in good old-fashioned silver coins.