ming, she set to
work, with the aid of her "smart" maid-servant and a daughter of her own,
who was beginning to stretch and spread at a fearful rate, but whom she
treated as a small child, to make the necessary preparations. The silver
had to be rubbed; also the grand plated urn,--her mother's before
hers,--style of the Empire,--looking as if it might have been made to
hold the Major's ashes. Then came the making and baking of cake and
gingerbread, the smell whereof reached even as far as the sidewalk in
front of the cottage, so that small boys returning from school snuffed it
in the breeze, and discoursed with each other on its suggestions; so that
the Widow Leech, who happened to pass, remembered she had n't called on
Marilly Raowens for a consid'ble spell, and turned in at the gate and
rang three times with long intervals,--but all in vain, the inside Widow
having "spotted" the outside one through the blinds, and whispered to her
aides-de-camp to let the old thing ring away till she pulled the bell out
by the roots, but not to stir to open the door.

Widow Rowens was what they called a real smart, capable woman, not very
great on books, perhaps, but knew what was what and who was who as well
as another,--knew how to make the little cottage look pretty, how to set
out a tea-table, and, what a good many women never can find out, knew her
own style and "got herself up tip-top," as our young friend Master
Geordie, Colonel Sprowle's heir-apparent, remarked to his friend from one
of the fresh-water colleges. Flowers were abundant now, and she had
dressed her rooms tastefully with them. The centre-table had two or
three gilt-edged books lying carelessly about on it, and some prints and
a stereoscope with stereographs to match, chiefly groups of picnics,
weddings, etc., in which the same somewhat fatigued looking ladies of
fashion and brides received the attentions of the same unpleasant-looking
young men, easily identified under their different disguises, consisting
of fashionable raiment such as gentlemen are supposed to wear habitually.
With these, however, were some pretty English scenes,--pretty except for
the old fellow with the hanging under-lip who infests every one of that
interesting series; and a statue or two, especially that famous one
commonly called the Lahcoon, so as to rhyme with moon and spoon, and
representing an old man with his two sons in the embraces of two
monstrous serpents.

There is no denying