The ceremony was intended to be funny, and the parson was the clown of the evening. He had many things to say that were in a script some member of the Ladies’ Aid must have kept since the heyday of Josh Billings—because these Tom Thumb Weddings were already old-fashioned in the ’thirties. “Do you, Myrtle, promise to get up early and serve a hot breakfast every day in the week?” was one of his great lines, and Toad piped up solemnly, “I do.” And I recall that I had to promise not to chew tobacco in the house, or use my wife’s best scissors to cut stovepipe wire.

All, however, led up to the culminating moment when I kissed the Bride. This had been carefully rehearsed, and it was meant to bring down the house, for I was to be so pressing, and kiss the Bride so often, that the parson, after feigning horror, had to part us. Sure-fire comedy, for it had just that spice of sanctified lewdness that the Ladies’ Aid loved, the innocence of children giving it a special savour. But here again I had an improvement; I disliked being laughed at as a child, and I felt that being kissed by me was a serious matter and far too good for such a pie-face as Toad Wilson. I had been to the movies a few times, as a great treat, and had seen kissers of international renown at work. So I went along with the foolish ideas of the Ladies’ Aid at rehearsals, but when the great moment arrived at the performance, I threw my hat to one side, knelt gracefully, and lifted Toad’s unready paw to my lips. Then I rose, seized her around her nail-keg waist, and pressed a long and burning kiss upon her mouth, bending her backward at the same time as much as her thicky-thumpy body would allow. This, I thought, would show Deptford what romance could be in the hands of a master.

The effect was all I could have hoped. There were oohs and ahs, some of delight, some of disapproval. As Toad and I walked down the aisle to wheezy Mendelssohn it was I, and not the Bride, who held all eyes. Best of all, I heard one woman murmur, with implications that I did not then understand, “That young one is Boy Staunton’s son, all right.” Toad showed a tendency to shine up to me afterward, when we were having ice-cream and cake at the Ladies’ Aid expense, but I was cold. When I have squeezed my orange, I throw it away; that was my attitude at the time.

Netty was not pleased. “I suppose you thought you were pretty smart, carrying on like that,” was her comment as I was going to bed, and this led to high words and tears. My grandmother thought I was overwrought by public performance, but my chief sensation was disappointment because nobody seemed to understand how remarkable I truly was.