"It _is_ a very sweet face," said Grace, exerting herself to be sympathetic, and thankful that she could say that much truthfully.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "It _is_ a very sweet face."]

"I can't imagine," said John, "what ever made her like me. You know she has refused half the fellows in the country. I hadn't the remotest idea that she would have any thing to say to me; but you see there's no accounting for tastes;" and John plumed himself, as young gentlemen do who have carried off prizes.

"You see," he added, "it's odd, but she took a fancy to me the first time she saw me. Now, you know, Gracie, I never found it easy to get along with ladies at first; but Lillie has the most extraordinary way of putting a fellow at his ease. Why, she made me feel like an old friend the first hour."

"Indeed!"

"Look here," said John, triumphantly drawing out his pocket-book, and producing thence a knot of rose-colored satin ribbon. "Did you ever see such a lovely color as this? It's so exquisite, you see! Well, she always is wearing just such knots of ribbon, the most lovely shades.

Why, there isn't one woman in a thousand could wear the things she does. Every thing becomes her. Sometimes it's rose color, or lilac, or pale blue,--just the most trying things to others are what she can wear."

"Dear John, I hope you looked for something deeper than the complexion in a wife," said Grace, driven to moral reflections in spite of herself.

"Oh, of course!" said John: "she has such soft, gentle, winning ways; she is so sympathetic; she's just the wife to make home happy, to be a bond of union to us all. Now, in a wife, what we want is just that.

Lillie's mind, for instance, hasn't been cultivated as yours and Let.i.tia's. She isn't at all that sort of girl. She's just a dear, gentle, little confiding creature, that you'll delight in. You'll form her mind, and she'll look up to you. You know she's young yet."

"Young, John! Why, she's seven and twenty," said Grace, with astonishment.

"Oh, no, my dear Gracie! that is all a mistake. She told me herself she's only twenty. You see, the trouble is, she went into company injudiciously early, a mere baby, in fact; and that causes her to have the name of being older than she is. But, I do a.s.sure you, she's only twenty. She told me so herself."

"Oh, indeed!" said Grace, prudently choking back the contradiction which she longed to utter. "I know it seems a good many summers since I heard of her as a belle at Newport."

"Ah, yes, exactly! You see she went into company, as a young lady, when she was only thirteen. She told me all about it. Her parents were very injudicious, and they pushed her forward. She regrets it now. She knows that it wasn't the thing at all. She's very sensitive to the defects in her early education; but I made her understand that it was the _heart_ more than the head that I cared for. I dare say, Gracie, she'll fall into all our little ways without really knowing; and you, in point of fact, will be mistress of the house as much as you ever were. Lillie is delicate, and never has had any care, and will be only too happy to depend on you. She's one of the gentle, dependent sort, you know."

To this statement, Grace did not reply. She only began nervously sweeping together the _debris_ of leaves and flowers which enc.u.mbered the table, on which the newly arranged flower-vases were standing.

Then she arranged the vases with great precision on the mantel-shelf.

As she was doing it, so many memories rushed over her of that room and her mother, and the happy, peaceful family life that had hitherto been led there, that she quite broke down; and, sitting down in the chair, she covered her face, and went off in a good, hearty crying spell.

Poor John was inexpressibly shocked. He loved and revered his sister beyond any thing in the world; and it occurred to him, in a dim wise, that to be suddenly dispossessed and shut out in the cold, when one has. .h.i.therto been the first object of affection, is, to make the best of it, a real and sore trial.

But Grace soon recovered herself, and rose up smiling through her tears. "What a fool I am making of myself!" she said. "The fact is, John, I am only a little nervous. You mustn't mind it. You know," she said, laughing, "we old maids are like cats,--we find it hard to be put out of our old routine. I dare say we shall all of us be happier in the end for this, and I shall try to do all I can to make it so.

Perhaps, John, I'd better take that little house of mine on Elm Street, and set up my tent in it, and take all the old furniture and old pictures, and old-time things. You'll be wanting to modernize and make over this house, you know, to suit a young wife."

"Nonsense, Gracie; no such thing!" said John. "Do you suppose I want to leave all the past a.s.sociations of my life, and strip my home bare of all pleasant memorials, because I bring a little wife here? Why, the very idea of a wife is somebody to sympathize in your tastes; and Lillie will love and appreciate all these dear old things as you and I do. She has such a sympathetic heart! If you want to make me happy, Gracie, stay here, and let us live, as near as may be, as before."

"So we will, John," said Grace, so cheerfully that John considered the whole matter as settled, and rushed upstairs to write his daily letter to Lillie.

CHAPTER IV.

_PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE_.

Miss Lillie Ellis was sitting upstairs in her virgin bower, which was now converted into a tumultuous, seething caldron of millinery and mantua-making, such as usually precedes a wedding. To be sure, orders had been forthwith despatched to Paris for the bridal regimentals, and for a good part of the _trousseau_; but that did not seem in the least to stand in the way of the time-honored confusion of sewing preparations at home, which is supposed to waste the strength and exhaust the health of every bride elect.

Whether young women, while disengaged, do not have proper under-clothing, or whether they contemplate marriage as an awful gulf which swallows up all future possibilities of replenishing a wardrobe,--certain it is that no sooner is a girl engaged to be married than there is a blind and distracting rush and pressure and haste to make up for her immediately a stock of articles, which, up to that hour, she has managed to live very comfortably and respectably without. It is astonishing to behold the number of inexpressible things with French names which unmarried young ladies never think of wanting, but which there is a desperate push to supply, and have ranged in order, the moment the matrimonial state is in contemplation.

Therefore it was that the virgin bower of Lillie was knee-deep in a tangled ma.s.s of stuffs of various hues and description; that the sharp sound of tearing off breadths resounded there; that Miss Clippins and Miss Snippings and Miss Nippins were sewing there day and night; that a sewing-machine was busily rattling in mamma's room; and that there were all sorts of pinking and quilling, and braiding and hemming, and whipping and ruffling, and over-sewing and cat-st.i.tching and hem-st.i.tching, and other female mysteries, going on.

As for Lillie, she lay in a loose _neglige_ on the bed, ready every five minutes to be called up to have something measured, or tried on, or fitted; and to be consulted whether there should be fifteen or sixteen tucks and then an insertion, or sixteen tucks and a series of puffs. Her labors wore upon her; and it was smilingly observed by Miss Clippins across to Miss Nippins, that Miss Lillie was beginning to show her "engagement bones." In the midst of these preoccupations, a letter was handed to her by the giggling chambermaid. It was a thick letter, directed in a bold honest hand. Miss Lillie took it with a languid little yawn, finished the last sentences in a chapter of the novel she was reading, and then leisurely broke the seal and glanced it over. It was the one that the enraptured John had spent his morning in writing.

"Miss Ellis, now, if you'll try on this jacket--oh! I beg your pardon," said Miss Clippins, observing the letter, "we can wait, _of course_;" and then all three laughed as if something very pleasant was in their minds.

"No," said Lillie, giving the letter a toss; "it'll _keep_;" and she stood up to have a jaunty little blue jacket, with its pluffy bordering of swan's down, fitted upon her.

"It's too bad, now, to take you from your letter," said Miss Clippins, with a sly nod.

"I'm sure you take it philosophically," said Miss Nippins, with a giggle.

"Why shouldn't I?" said the divine Lillie. "I get one every day; and it's all the old story. I've heard it ever since I was born."

"Well, now, to be sure you have. Let's see," said Miss Clippins, "this is the seventy-fourth or seventy-fifth offer, was it?"

"Oh, you must ask mamma! she keeps the lists: I'm sure I don't trouble my head," said the little beauty; and she looked so natty and jaunty when she said it, just arching her queenly white neck, and making soft, downy dimples in her cheeks as she gave her fresh little childlike laugh; turning round and round before the looking-gla.s.s, and issuing her orders for the fitting of the jacket with a precision and real interest which showed that there _were_ things in the world which didn't become old stories, even if one had been used to them ever since one was born.

Lillie never was caught napping when the point in question was the fit of her clothes.

When released from the little blue jacket, there was a rose-colored morning-dress to be tried on, and a grave discussion as to whether the honiton lace was to be set on plain or frilled.

So important was this case, that mamma was summoned from the sewing-machine to give her opinion. Mrs. Ellis was a fat, fair, rosy matron of most undisturbed conscience and digestion, whose main business in life had always been to see to her children's clothes. She had brought up Lillie with faithful and religious zeal; that is to say, she had always ruffled her underclothes with her own hands, and darned her stockings, sick or well; and also, as before intimated, kept a list of her offers, which she was ready in confidential moments to tell off to any of her acquaintance. The question of ruffled or plain honiton was of such vital importance, that the whole four took some time in considering it in its various points of view.

"Sarah Selfridge had hers ruffled," said Lillie.

"And the effect was perfectly sweet," said Miss Clippins.

"Perhaps, Lillie, you had better have it ruffled," said mamma.

"But three rows laid on plain has such a lovely effect," said Miss Nippins.

"Perhaps, then, she had better have three rows laid on plain," said mamma.

"Or she might have one row ruffled on the edge, with three rows laid on plain, with a satin fold," said Miss Clippins. "That's the way I fixed Miss Elliott's."

"That would be a nice way," said mamma. "Perhaps, Lillie, you'd better have it so."

"Oh! come now, all of you, just hush," said Lillie. "I know just how I want it done."

The words may sound a little rude and dictatorial; but Lillie had the advantage of always looking so pretty, and saying dictatorial things in such a sweet voice, that everybody was delighted with them; and she took the matter of arranging the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g in hand with a clearness of head which showed that it was a subject to which she had given mature consideration. Mrs. Ellis shook her fat sides with a comfortable motherly chuckle.

"Lillie always did know exactly what she wanted: she's a smart little thing."

And, when all the trying on and arranging of folds and frills and pinks and bows was over, Lillie threw herself comfortably upon the bed, to finish her letter.

Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn with which she laid down the missive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn."]