to have Laura say what
she always did,--and which, after all, it was sweet to me to hear. Those
were silly days!

"No, Del,--that is not the end of it,--only the beginning of it,--of a
happy, useful, good life,--your path growing brighter and broader every
year,--and--and--we won't talk of the garlands, dear; but your heart
will have bridal-blossoms, whether your head has or not."

Laura kissed me, with tears in her sisterly eyes. She never talks fine,
and went directly out of the room after this.

I thought that women shouldn't swear at all, or, if they did, should
break their oaths as gracefully as I did mine, when I whispered it was
"_so_ good of him, to be willing I should stay in the cottage where I
had always lived, and where every rose-tree and lilac knew me!" And that
was true, too. But not all the truth. What need to be telling truths all
the time? And what had women tongues for, but to hold them sometimes?
Perhaps "he," too, would have preferred a journey to Europe, and a house
on the Mill-Dam.

Things gradually settled themselves. My troubles seemed coming to a
close by mechanical pressure. As to the name, it was better than Fire,
Famine, and Slaughter,--and I was to take it into consideration, any
way, and get used to it, if I could. The other trouble I put aside
for the moment. After it was concluded on that the wedding should be
strictly private, it was not necessary to buy my aunt's present under
a few days, and I could have the decided advantage, in that way, of
avoiding a duplicate.

The Monday of my marriage sped away swiftly. Polly had come up early to
say to "Laury" (for Polly was a free and independent American girl of
forty-five) that "there'd be so much goin' to the door, and such, Betsy
Ann had best be handy by, to answer the bell. Fin'ly, she's down there
with her bunnet off, and goin' to stay."

As usual, Polly's plans were excellent, and adopted. There would be all
the wedding-presents to arrive, congratulatory notes, etc. Everything to
arrange, and a thousand and one things that neither one nor three pairs
of hands could do. How I wished Betsy Ann would consent to dress like an
Oriental child, and look pretty and picturesque,--like a Barbary slave
bearing vessels of gold and silver chalices, instead of her silly
pointed waist and "mantilly," which she persisted in wearing, and which,
of course, gave the look only of a stranger and sojourner in the land!

I hoped she was a careful chi