All the rest
you must find in the house."
"What, fit her out with a parcel of old things? so cruel, so
unreasonable, dear Edward?"
"Old things! Why, where is all your gorgeous attire from Oriental climes?
I see the splendiferous articles arrive, and then they vanish for ever."
"Now, shawls and Indian muslins! pray what use are they to a bride?"
"Why, what looks nicer than a white muslin dress?"
"Married in muslin? The very idea makes me shiver."
"Well, clap her on another petticoat."
"How can you be so childish? Muslin is not the _the thing._"
"No more is running in debt."
He then suggested that a white shawl or two should be cut into a bridal
dress. At this both ladies' fair throats opened on him with ridicule: cut
fifty guinea shawls into ten-pound dresses; that was male economy! was
it? Total, a wedding was a wedding: new things always _had_ had to be
bought for a wedding, and always would _in secula seculorum._
"New things? Yes," said the pertinacious wretch; "but they need not be
new-bought things. You ladies go and confound the world's eyes with your
own in the drollest way: If Gorgeous Attire has lain long in your
drawers, you fancy the world will detect on its glossy surface how long
you had it, and gloated over it, and made it stale to your eye, before
you could bring your mind to wear it.
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