"If it makes you feel bad to have me cross," Patty said one morning, in answer to a remonstrance of Flossy's, "think how much worse it is for me to be cross. I have to endure my own company all the time, you know."

"Well, Patty-pat," Flossy answered meditatively, "be happy and you'll be virtuous. And that reminds me of Bathalina's room. Don't you think that when it's papered—aunt Britann, didn't you say it was to be done this week?—it might have a frieze, or a dado, or something, of mottoes?"

"Of mottoes?"

"Yes. I've thought up some lovely ones. 'A woman is known by the company she forsakes' is a good one. Then, 'The early bird dreads the fire,'—you know how she hates to get up and build the fire."

"Water is more her element," said Will. "Can't you have—

or something of that kind?"

"Oh, no! That isn't good. 'Be virtuous and you'll be disagreeable' might do; and 'Marry in haste, and separate at leisure.' I'll think up plenty of mottoes, aunt Britann, if you'll have them put on her walls."

"There comes her aunt Thomas Jefferson Gooch, at your service," Will said, glancing from the window. "There must be a storm in the air to bring her over so early."

He was right. Mrs. Gooch had come over to remonstrate with her niece upon her relations to her husband.

"I couldn't rest, Bathalina," she said, "after hearing that that unfacalized critter was round here again, for I knew just what a fool you be. And it ain't no way respectable to have an intermittent husband, always comin' an' goin,' like the old woman's soap. 'Tain't what our folks has been used to. He's got all your money, hain't he? I'm sure I don't see what more he wants. You let him have every copper you had in the bank, I'll be bound."

"Well," retorted Mrs. Mixon, "what if I did? I put that money by for a rainy day, didn't I? an' when it come, I spent it."

"Lawful sakes! I hope you didn't put it by for Peter Mixin's rainy days! As I told your cousin Huldy, he's one of them folks that makes a dreadful cheerful funeral."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Bathalina, in her confusion wetting her finger, and putting it to the water in the boiler to see if it were hot enough to sizzle, like a hot iron. "How confusin' you are, aunt Jeff! 'Restless mortals toil for nought,' as the hymn says; and you're one of 'em."

"I should think I was!" retorted aunty Jeff. "But I tell you ours is a respectable family, and such culch as Peter Mixup was never brought into it before; to say nothing of having a husband bobbing after you like the tail of a kite, now here and now there!"

"Gracious!" exclaimed her niece fiercely. "How you go on! Don't get me mad, or my sinful pride'll be too much for me."

"Sinful fiddlesticks! If you had any pride, you wouldn't have that rag-tag-and-bobtail, Tom-Dick-and-Harry sort of a husband round you!"

"I shall go mad!" cried Bathalina, with an awful shrillness in her tones. "You'll make me go a raving lunacy!"

"You are one now!" screamed her aunt. "You always was."

Instead of replying, Bathalina seized the rolling-pin, and began to roll the pie-crust she was making with a vigor which bespoke the conflict within. At the same time she burst out into her favorite song,—

"I always hide the rolling-pin from my pastry," broke in aunt Jeff with cutting emphasis. "Pie-crust is like millinery, the less it is handled, the better."

"Sinful sakes!" exclaimed her niece, throwing down the rolling-pin. "I try to live as I'll wish I had when I stand round my dying-bed; but if you come here to fight, we'll just make a business of that, and let other things go. But if you come peaceable, you just keep your tongue still."

"Well, well," the visitor said, somewhat startled, "we won't quarrel. But what is Peter Mixer dangling round here for?"

"Something or other between him and Frank Breck," Bathalina said evasively. "I never asked him; for I found I couldn't get it out of him, though I've tried more'n forty different ways."

"But what's he taking up with you again for?"

"Me?" demanded the other indignantly. "Ain't I his wife? Besides, he says Hannah wants to make up with me, and leave me her property."

"Her property! Where'd she get any?"

"Well," Bathalina answered with an air of profound mystery, which in reality arose from profound ignorance, "Hannah may not have been all she ought to be, an' I ain't sayin' she has. But she may have property for all that. And, since her daughter ran off with that Brown of Samoset, Hannah's set agin her, and Peter's talked her over to consider me. And if she does,—as why shouldn't she?—if she does"—

"Nonsense!" interrupted aunty Jeff sardonically. "Ef she does! Ef is a crooked letter. And I thought our family was done with that Hannah Clemens, or Smithers, or whatever she calls herself. I'm sure I cast her off the day she went off with old Mullen."

With which conclusion she gathered herself together, and departed.

On the afternoon of this same day Burleigh Blood came to take council with Flossy about his masquerade dress. In Montfield the young people were thrown upon their own resources for costumes to be used in theatricals or fancy-dress parties. Burleigh, motherless from boyhood, and having no sisters, was forced to take Miss Plant at her word, and come to her for aid on this occasion, being, if the truth were told, but too glad to do so. The brawny fellow, with his magnificent chest and his deep voice, was as ardently in love with this sallow morsel of humanity as if she had been as like Brunhilde as he like Siegfried. Her odd ways and harmless affectations were to him inexpressibly droll and charming. He had at first been thrown into her society by the caprice of Patty, who amused herself by playing upon the diffidence of her suitor. It was not long before Patty began to suspect that this clear-eyed giant had somehow touched her cousin's heart, which proved large enough to contain him, despite her tiny person. Visions of matchmaking danced rainbow-like before the eyes of Patty, and she contrived that her quondam lover and her cousin should constantly be thrown together; or, more exactly, she fancied she managed what would in any case have come about. Later her own affairs had engrossed her so completely, that she hardly even noticed how matters stood with Flossy.

"I am sure I do not know what to wear," Burleigh said, when he and Flossy were alone together in Mrs. Sanford's parlor. "It is such a bother to get up a rig!"

"I've thought it all out," Flossy answered. "You wear this long frock, you know, and it will disguise your figure, and oh! monks do have such good things to eat! This will do finely, don't you think?"

Her friend had not the least idea of her meaning, and only stared.

"It could be made of black cambric," Flossy continued; "and I'll lend you a rosary, and you'll want an old rope to gird it in. You'll make a magnificent monk."

"Oh! you mean me to dress as a monk."

"Of course. Didn't I say so? Sometimes folks don't understand me, but I'm sure I don't see why. Of course I can't help that."

"No, of course not," he assented. "But how shall I get this robe?"

"Bring me the cloth, and I'll make it. Grandmother will help me."

"It is too bad for you to have so much trouble."

"Pooh! It's no bother. I'm sure I shall be glad to do it; and, besides, I shall know you."

"That's so!" he said. "What are you going to wear?"

"Do you think I'd tell?"

"It is only fair you should, for you'll know me. Besides, I can never find out anybody."

"Well," Flossy said in a sudden burst of confidence, "I'll tell you something. Ease and Will—no, I won't tell that, for I promised not to, and you mustn't mention it if I did. But I'm going to wear the dress Ease wore in 'The Country Wooing.'"

"Was it red?"

"Red? No, indeed! You never know any thing about what a girl has on."

"I know I don't. I don't look at them enough."

"More likely," she retorted, "you look at the wearers, and not at the dresses."

"No: only at you."

Let no reader suppose Burleigh was complimenting: he was only telling the simple truth. Flossy blushed a little at his earnest frankness.

"You'd better look at Patty," she said. "She's ever so much prettier."

"I suppose she must be," he responded naÏvely; "but I'd rather look at you. I hope you don't mind."

"Oh, not in the least! Why should I? But this is all wool-gathering. Let's arrange about your suit."

"But you haven't told me what your dress is."

"It's a white lute-string."

"Lute-string?"

"Yes, of course," she said, laughing at his puzzled face. "This old-fashioned soft silk."

"Oh! I thought lute-string"—

"Would be like a guitar-string, I suppose; but it isn't. Don't you remember the dress? It had a square corsage"—

"You'd better not tell me any more. It's an old-fashioned soft silk, and it's white. That is all I could remember. I shouldn't know a square corsage from—from a square handspike."

The friendship between Flossy and Burleigh ripened rapidly over that monk's garb. She assumed great airs of superiority and authority over him, which pleased Burleigh marvellously. She climbed into a chair to fit the robe over his shoulders, boxing his ears when he insisted upon turning around that he might see her; being at last forced to compromise by letting him face the mirror, and gaze rapturously at the image of her petite person and pale face. But at last Flossy got so embarrassed, that she declared she must at once be satisfied about the weather, and led him off to consult Mrs. Sanford.

"Of course it will be pleasant next Tuesday evening," Mrs. Sanford decided after a consultation with her beloved "Old Farmer's Almanac." "The moon quarters in the west at seven o'clock that very night. I wish," she continued with a sigh, as she returned the almanac to its place, "that we didn't have to change almanacs every year. I just get all my accounts down in one, and its year's gone by. And then I'd like to keep an almanac for association's sake; but I suppose it wouldn't be much good the second year. Things do pass away so in this world!"