us day would be only good
manners.

Miss Carlyle was seated in her dining-room, her hands folded before her.
It was rare indeed that _she_ was caught doing nothing. She turned her
eyes on Mr. Dill as he entered.

"Why, what on earth has taken you?" began she, before he could speak.
"You are decked out like a young duck!"

"I am going to the wedding, Miss Cornelia. Did you know it? Mrs. Hare
was so kind as to invite me to the breakfast, and Mr. Archibald insists
upon my going to church. I am not too fine, am I?"

Poor old Dill's "finery" consisted of a white waistcoat with gold
buttons, and an embroidered shirt-front. Miss Corny was pleased to
regard it with sarcastic wrath.

"Fine!" echoed she. "I don't know what _you_ call it. I would not make
myself such a spectacle for untold gold. You'll have all the ragamuffins
in the street forming a tail after you, thinking you are the bridegroom.
A man of your years to deck yourself out in a worked shirt! I would have
had some rosettes on my coat-tails, while I was about it."

"My coat's quite plain, Miss Cornelia," he meekly remonstrated.

"Plain! What would you have it?" snapped Miss Cornelia. "Perhaps you
covet a wreath of embroidery round it, gold leaves and scarlet flowers,
with a swansdown collar? It would only be in keeping with that shirt and
waistcoat. I might as well have gone and ordered a white tarletan dress,
looped up with peas, and streamed through the town in that guise. It
would be just as consistent."

"People like to dress a little out of common at a wedding, Miss
Cornelia; it's only respectful, when they are invited guests."

"I don't say people should go to a wedding in a hop sack. But there's a
medium. Pray, do you know your age?"

"I am turned sixty, Miss Corny."

"You just are. And do you consider it decent for an old man, going on
for seventy, to be decorated off as you are now? I don't; and so I tell
you my mind. Why, you'll be the laughing-stock of the parish! Take care
the boys don't tie a tin kettle to you!"

Mr. Dill thought he would leave the subject. His own impression was,
that he was _not_ too fine, and that the parish would not regard him as
being so; still, he had a great reverence for Miss Corny's judgment, and
was not altogether easy. He had had his white gloves in his hand when he
entered, but he surreptitiously smuggled them into his pocket, lest they
might offend. He passed to the subject which had brought him thither.

"W