dowry and a plain face, is but small. For--do not dislike me for
it if you can help--I _am_ plain. I know it by the joint and honest
testimony of all my brethren. I have had no trouble in gathering the
truth from them. A hundred times they have volunteered it, with that
healthy disregard of any sickly sensitiveness which arms one against
blows to one's vanity through all after-life. Yes: I am plain; not
offensively so, not largely, fatly, staringly plain, but in a small,
blond, harmless way. However, Sir Roger thinks me pretty. Did not he say
so, in unmistakable English? I have tried darkly to hint this to the
boys, but have been so decisively pooh-poohed that I resolve not to
allude to the subject again. Not only am I plain now, but I shall remain
plain to my life's end. Unlike the generality of ugly heroines, you will
not see me develop and effloresce into beauty toward the end of my
story.

The interval between my betrothal and my marriage is but short. On April
22d, I put my hand into Sir Roger's. On May 20th, I am to put it into
his for good. When the bridegroom is forty-seven, and the bride one of
six, why should there be any delay? Why should a man keep and lodge his
daughter any longer than he can help, when he has found some one else
willing to do it for him? This, I think, is father's view. And,
meanwhile, father himself is more like an _angel_ than a man. Not once
do we hear the terrible polite voice that chills the marrow of our
bones. Not once is his nose more than becomingly hooked. Not once does
he look like a hawk. _Another_ long bill comes in for Algy, and is
dismissed with the benevolent comment that you cannot put gray heads
upon green shoulders. I dine every day now; and father and I converse
agreeably upon indifferent topics. Once--oh, prodigious!--we take a walk
round the Home Farm together, and he consults me about the Berkshire
pigs. Then comes a mad rush for clothes. I am involved in a whirlwind of
haberdashery, Brussels lace, diamonds. It feels very odd--the becoming
possessed of a great number of stately garments, to which Barbara has no
fellows--Barbara and I, who hitherto have been always stitch for stitch
alike. And meanwhile I see next to nothing of my future husband. This is
chiefly my own doing.

"You will not mind," I say, standing before him one day in the
drawing-room window, and speaking rather bashfully--somehow I do not
feel so comfortably easy and outspoken with him as I did bef