y as I was."

"I can't imagine Miss Recompense getting her wedding gown ready. What
would it be, I wonder?"

Betty laughed heartily.

"She could buy the best in the market if she chose," said Aunt Priscilla
sharply. "She must have a good bit of money laid by. Cousin Winthrop
would be lost without her. Not but what there are as good housekeepers
in the world as Recompense Gardiner."

Then Aunt Priscilla had to stop and cough. Polly came in with some
posset.

"I'll have one of those eggs beaten up in some mulled cider, Polly," she
said.

Doris glanced curiously at the old colored woman. She was tall and still
very straight, and, though kept in strict subjection all her life, had
an air and bearing of dignity, as if she might have come from some royal
race. Her hair was snowy white, and the little braided tails hung below
her turban, which was of gay Madras, and the small shoulder shawl she
wore was of red and black.

"You're too old a woman to be fussed up in such gay things," Aunt
Priscilla would exclaim severely every time she brought them home, for
she purchased Polly's attire. "But you've always worn them, and I really
don't know as you'd look natural in suitable colors."

"I like cheerful goin' things, that make you feel as if the Lord had
just let out a summer day stead'er November. An', missus, you don't like
a gray fire burned half to ashes, nuther."

Truth to tell, Aunt Priscilla did hanker after a bit of gayety, though
she frowned on it to preserve a just balance with conscience. And no one
knew the parcels done up in an old oaken chest in the storeroom, that
had been indulged in at reprehensible moments.

Just then there was a curious diversion to Doris. A beautiful sleek
tiger cat entered the room, and, walking up to the fire, turned and
looked at the child, waving his long tail majestically back and forth.
He came nearer with his sleepy, translucent eyes studying her.

"May I--touch him?" she asked hesitatingly.

"Land, yes! That's Polly's Solomon. She talks to him till she's made him
most a witch, and she thinks he knows everything."

Solomon settled the question by putting two snowy white paws on Doris'
knee, and stretching up indefinitely with a dainty sniffing movement of
the whiskers, as if he wanted to understand whether advances would be
favorably received.

There was a cat at the Leveretts', but it haunted the cellar, the shed,
and the stable, and was hustled out of the kitchen with