to be ready for an early start.

Well, I went to bed feeling as if I had got to start by some swift
railway train every hour of the night, and must be ready for them all.
It was Sunday night, you know, and I woke up twice with a start, before
it was next week; got up, felt for the matches I had laid handy, and
went to bed again, and dreamed that I was trying to get into a steamboat
with two steeples, which put off, and left me freezing on the dock.

Like one of the wise virgins, I had brought a candle upstairs, and some
matches, which was an improvement on their old lamps, I dare say; but I
wasn't much afraid of the dark, and didn't keep it burning, only left
everything ready.

After that dream, I started up, struck a match, and found that I had
been just fifteen minutes in getting that steam church under way. So I
went on dreaming, starting up, and lighting matches all night, till at
last I hadn't but one left, and with that I lighted the candle, and a
gas-burner by the bureau, and began to dress myself.

Before I got through, Cousin E. E. was at the door, with her beehive
bonnet on, and wrapped up in fur.

"Almost ready? I am so glad, for the day is just beginning to break, and
I wouldn't have it broad light when we get there, for anything," says
she. "Wrap up warm, for it has blown up awful cold in the night."

I did wrap up warm; put on a veil, and tied my mink-skin victorine, with
three tails on each tab, close around my neck.

We went downstairs carefully, for only one burner was twinkling in the
hall, and the whole house was dark and shivery.

"Come in here," says Cousin E. E., opening the dining-room door.

Under the glass globe, in which two or three chilly lights seemed
longing to go out, the ghost of a table was spread, with a great deal of
silver, and very little to eat.

"Just a cup of coffee and a mouthful of toast before we start," says E.
E., sitting down behind a great silver urn in her furs and her beehive;
"for my own part, I could do without that."

She poured me out a cup of coffee--it was half cold and awfully
riley--and asked me to help myself to a piece of toast, which had black
bars across it, as if it had been striped on a gridiron.

"Things are getting cold," says E. E., "they have been standing so long.
The cook has been out an hour; but she knows I consider this my
penance."

"Out where?" says I.

"Oh, to early service."

"An hour?" says I; "why I thought we were going to e