Want of breath brought the impromptu ball to a close, and then people began to go.

‘I wish you well, my dear; I heartily wish you well; but I think you’ll be sorry for it,’ said Aunt March to Meg, adding to the bridegroom, as he led her to the carriage, ‘You’ve got a treasure, young man,—see that you deserve it.’

‘That is the prettiest wedding I’ve been to for an age, Ned, and I don’t see why, for there wasn’t a bit of style about it,’ observed Mrs Moffat to her husband, as they drove away.

‘Laurie, my lad, if you ever want to indulge in this sort of thing, get one of those little girls to help you, and I shall be perfectly satisfied,’ said Mr Laurence, settling himself in his easy-chair to rest, after the excitement of the morning.

‘I’ll do my best to gratify you, sir,’ was Laurie’s unusually dutiful reply, as he carefully unpinned the posy Jo had put in his buttonhole.

The little house was not far away, and the only bridal journey Meg had was the quiet walk with John, from the old home to the new. When she came down, looking like a pretty Quakeress, in her dove-colored suit and straw bonnet tied with white, they all gathered about her to say ‘good-by,’ as tenderly as if she had been going to make the grand tour.

‘Don’t feel that I am separated from you, Marmee dear, or that I love you any the less for loving John so much,’ she said, clinging to her mother, with full eyes, for a moment. ‘I shall come every day, father, and expect to keep my old place in all your hearts, though I am married. Beth is going to be with me a great deal, and the other girls will drop in now and then to laugh at my housekeeping struggles. Thank you all for my happy wedding-day. Good-by, good-by!’

They stood watching her with faces full of love, and hope, and tender pride, as she walked away, leaning on her husband’s arm, with her hands full of flowers, and the June sunshine brightening her happy face,—and so Meg’s married life began.

There is no friend like a sister, but who comes close?

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