us come.
Take your mare along, Kate, and you won't lack fresh air. Now what do
you say, Seymour?"

Of course the Honorable Prim bobbed his honorable head and said he had
been worried himself over Kate's loss of appetite, and that if Temple
would, etc., etc.--he would--etc., etc.--and so Mammy Henny began to get
pink and white and other fluffy things together, and Ben, with Todd to
help, led Joan, her own beloved saddle horse, down to the dock and saw
that she was safely lodged between decks, and then up came a coach (all
this was two days later) and my lady drove off with two hair trunks in
front and a French bonnet box behind--St. George beside her, and fat
Mammy Henny in white kerchief and red bandanna, opposite, and Todd in
one of St. George's old shooting-jackets on the box next the driver,
with his feet on two of the dogs, the others having been loaned to a
friend.

And it was a great leave-taking when the party reached the wharf. Not
only were three or four of her girl friends present, but a dozen or more
of the old merchants forsook their desks, when the coach unlimbered,
most of them crossing the cobbles--some bare-headed, and all of them in
high stocks and swallow-tail coats--pens behind their ears, spectacles
on their pates--to bid the young princess good-by.

For Kate was still "our Kate," in the widest and broadest sense and the
pride and joy of all who knew her, and many who didn't. That she had a
dozen beaux--and that some of them had tried to bore holes in each other
for love of her; and that one of them was now a wanderer and another in
a state of collapse, if report were true--was quite as it should be. Men
had died for women a hundred times less worthy and a thousand times less
beautiful, and men would die of love again. When at last she made up her
mind she would choose the right man, and in the meantime God bless her
for just being alive.

And she was never more alive or more charming than to-day.

"Oh, how delightful of you, Mr. Murdoch, and you too, Mr. Bowdoin--and
Max--and all of you, to cross those wretched stones. No, wait, I'll come
to you--" she had called out, when with a stamp of her little feet she
had shaken the pleats from her skirt--adding when they had all kissed
her hand in turn--"Yes--I am going down to be dairy-maid at Peggy
Coston's," at which the bald-headed old fellows, with their hands
upraised in protest at so great a sacrilege, bowed to the ground, their
fingers on their