f
Kitty's order-book, nor on both sides, for that matter. There was brisk,
bustling Bundleton the grocer in a green necktie, white waistcoat,
and checked trousers, arm and arm with his thin wife in black silk and
mitts; there was Heffern the dairyman in funeral black, relieved by a
brown tie, and his daughter, in variegated muslin, accompanied by two
young men whom neither Kling nor Felix nor the Gossburger had ever
heard of or seen before, but who were heartily welcomed; there were fat
Porterfield the butcher in his every-day clothes, minus his apron, with
his two girls, aged ten and fourteen, their hair in pigtails tied
with blue ribbons; there were Mr. and Mrs. Codman, all in their best
"Sunday-go-to-meetings," with their little daughter Polly, named after
the mother, pretty as a picture and a great friend of Masie--most
distinguished people were the Codmans, he looking like an alderman and
his wife the personification of good humor, her rosy cheeks matching the
tint of her husband's necktie.

There was Digwell the undertaker in his professional clothes, enlivened
by a white waistcoat and red scarf, quite beside himself with joy
because nobody had died or was likely to die so far as he had heard,
thus permitting him to "send dull care to the winds!"--his own way of
putting it. There was Pestler the druggist in an up-to-date dress suit
as good as anybody's--almost as good as the one Felix wore, and from
which, for the first time since he landed, he had shaken the creases.
There was Tim Kelsey, in the suit of clothes he wore every day, the only
difference being the high collar instead of the turned-down one, the
change giving him the appearance of a man with a bandaged neck, so
narrow were his poor shoulders and so big was the fine head overtopping
it. There were Mike and Bobby and the two Dutchies and Sanderson, who
came with his hands full of roses for Masie, and a score of others whose
names the scribe forgets, besides lots and lots of children of all sizes
and ages.

And there were Kitty and John--and they were both magnificent--at least
Kitty was--she being altogether resplendent in black alpaca finished off
by a fichu of white lace, her big, full-bosomed, robust body filling
it without a crease; and he in a new suit bought for the occasion, and
which fitted him everywhere except around the waist--a defect which
Kitty had made good by means of a well-concealed safety-pin in the back.

It was for Kitty that Feli