e wealthy Mrs. Cliff would arrive at 5.20
that afternoon, and what were they going to do about it?

When she had gone home before, all her friends and neighbors, and even
distant acquaintances,--if such people were possible in such a little
town,--had come to her house to bid her welcome, and many of them had
met her at the station. But then they had come to meet a poor,
shipwrecked widow, pitied by most of them and loved by many. Even those
who neither pitied nor loved her had a curiosity to see her, for she had
been shipwrecked, and it was not known in Plainton how people looked
after they had been wrecked.

But now the case was so different that Mrs. Cliff did not expect the
same sort of greeting, and she greatly feared formality. If Mr. Perley
should appear on the platform, surrounded by some of the leading members
of his congregation, and should publicly take her by the hand and bid
her "Welcome home!" and if those who felt themselves entitled to do so,
should come forward and shake hands with her, while others, who might
feel that they belonged to a different station in life, should keep in
the background and wait until she came to speak to them, she would be
deeply hurt.

After all, Plainton and the people in it were dearer to her than
anything else in the world, and it would be a great shock if she should
meet formality where she looked for cordial love. She wanted to see Mr.
Perley,--he was the first person she had seen when she came home
before,--but now she hoped that he would not be there. She was very much
afraid that he would make a stiff speech to her; and if he did that, she
would know that there had been a great change, and that the friends she
would meet were not the same friends she had left. She was almost afraid
to look out of the window as the train slowed up at the station.

The minds of the people of Plainton had been greatly exercised about
this home-coming of Mrs. Cliff. That afternoon it was probable that no
other subject of importance was thought about or talked about in the
town, and for some days before the whole matter had been so thoroughly
considered and discussed that the good citizens, without really coming
to any fixed and general decision upon the subject, had individually
made up their minds that, no matter what might happen afterward, they
would make no mistake upon this very important occasion which might
subsequently have an influence upon their intercourse with their old,
re