ing."

"Where?"

"Oh! anywhere. No matter where. I haven't thought about that part of
it."

"Then you'll be married right here, in this house. You shall have a nice
little wedding."

"Oh! and orange-blossoms!" exclaimed Miss Snow, clapping her hands.

"And a veil!" added Number Two.

"And a--" Number Three was not so familiar with such occasions as to be
able to supply another article, so she clapped her hands.

They were all in a delicious flutter. It would be so nice to have a
wedding in the house! It was a good sign. Did the young ladies think
that it might break a sort of electric spell that hung over the
parsonage, and result in a shower which would float them all off?
Perhaps so. They were, at least, very happy about it.

Then they all sat down again, to talk over the matter of clothes. Miss
Butterworth did not wish to make herself ridiculous.

"I've said a thousand times, if I ever said it once," she remarked,
"that there's no fool like an old fool. Now, I don't want to hear any
nonsense about orange-blossoms, or about a veil. If there's anything
that I do despise above board, it's a bridal veil on an old maid. And
I'm not going to have a lot of things made up that I can't use. I'm just
going to have a snug, serviceable set of clothes, and in three days I'm
going to look as if I'd been married ten years."

"It seems to me," said Miss Snow, "that you ought to do something. I'm
sure, if I were in your place, that I should want to do something."

The other girls tittered.

"Not that I ever expect to be in your place, or anything like it," she
went on, "but it does seem to me as if something extra ought to be
done--white kid gloves or something."

"And white satin gaiters," suggested the youngest sister.

"I guess you'd think Jim Fenton was extra enough if you knew him," said
Miss Butterworth, laughing. "There's plenty that's extra, goodness
knows! without buying anything."

"Well," persisted the youngest Miss Snow, "I'd have open-worked
stockings, and have my hair frizzed, any way."

"Oh, I speak to do your hair," put in the second daughter.

"You're just a lot of chickens, the whole of you," said the tailoress.

Miss Snow, whose age was hovering about the confines of mature
maidenhood, smiled a deprecating smile, and said that she thought she
was about what they sold for chickens sometimes, and intimated that she
was anything but tender.

"Well, don't be discouraged; that's all I have to say