resembled a huge cocoon. The Squire placed a big armchair for her near
the fire, and Marshy sat down, but not without disdaining Anna's offers
to remove her wraps. She sniffed at Anna--no other word will express
it--and savagely clutched her big old-fashioned muff when Anna would
have taken it from her to dry it of the snow.

The sleighbells jingled merrily as the different parties drove by,
singing, whistling, laughing, on their way to the party. The church
choir, snugly installed in "Doc" Wiggins' sleigh, stopped at the
Squire's to "thaw out," and try a step or two; Rube Whipple, the town
constable, giving them his famous song, "All Bound 'Round with a Woolen
String."

Rube was, as usual, the pivot around which the merry-making centered.
A few nights before, burglars had broken into the postoffice and
carried off the stamps, and the town constable was, as usual, the last
one to hear of it. On the night in question, he had spent the evening
at the corner grocery store with a couple of his old pals, the stove
answering the purpose of a rather large bulls-eye, at which they
expectorated, with conscientious regularity, from time to time. Seth
Holcomb, Marthy Perkins' faithful swain, had been of the corner grocery
party.

"Well, Constable, hear you and Seth helped keep the stove warm the
other night, while thieves walked off with the postoffice," Marthy
announced; "what I'd like to know is, how much bitters, rheumatism
bitters, you had during the evening?"

"Well, Marthy Perkins, you ought to be the last to throw it up to Seth
that he's obliged to spend his evenings round a corner grocery--that's
adding insult to injury."

"Insult to injury I reckon can stand, Rube; it's when you add Seth's
bitters that it staggers."

But Seth, who never minded Marthy's stings and jibes, only remarked:
"The recipy for them bitters was given to me by a blame good doctor."

"That cuts you out, Wiggins," the Squire said playfully.

"No, I don't care about standing father to Seth's bitters," "Doc"
Wiggins remarked, "but I've tasted worse stuff on a cold night."

"Oh, Seth ain't pertickler about the temperature, when he takes a dose
of bitters. Hot or cold, it's all the same to him," finished Marthy.

Seth took the opportunity to whisper to her: "You're going to sit next
to me in 'Doc' Wiggins' sleigh to-night, ain't you, Marthy?"

"Indeed I ain't," said the spinster, scornfully tossing her head, "my
place will have to be fil