It may be instinctive; it may be that children vaguely realize that at the end of all wedding journeys is disillusion.
The girl in the forward chair raised herself a little, the better to see the gorgeous blue palanquin of the dimly visible bride.
"What a wonderful colour!" she exclaimed.
"Kingfisher feathers," said Ah Cum.

"It is an ordinary wedding," he added; "some shopkeeper's daughter.

Probably she was married years ago and is now merely on the way to her husband's house.

The palanquin is hired and so is the procession.

Quite ordinary." The air in the narrow street, which was not eight feet wide, swarmed with smells impossible to define; but all at once the pleasantly pungent odour of Chinese incense drifted across the girl's face, and gratefully she quickened her inhalations.
In her ears there was a medley of sound: wailing music, rumbling tom-toms and sputtering firecrackers.