n the gravity of
her husband's face, Mrs Snow thought, but his words were cheerful.

"Well, yes, I vote for Canada. We ain't going to believe all the boys
say about it, but it will be a cool kind of place to go to in summer,
and it will be a change, to say nothing of the boys."

Graeme laughed softly. The boys would not have been the last on her
list of good reasons, for preferring Canada as the scene of their summer
wanderings. She did not join in the cheerful conversation that
followed, however, but sat thinking a little sadly, that the meeting
with the boys, in their distant home, would be sorrowful as well as
joyful.

If Mrs Snow had heard anything from her husband, with regard to the
true state of the minister's health, she said nothing of it to Graeme,
and she went about the preparations for their journey cheerfully though
very quietly. Indeed, if her preparations had been on a scale of much
greater magnificence, she needed not have troubled herself about them.
Ten pairs of hands were immediately placed at her disposal, where half
the number would have served. Her affairs were made a personal matter
by all her friends. Each vied with the others in efforts to help her
and save her trouble; and if the reputation of Merleville, for all
future time, had depended on the perfect fit of Graeme's one black silk,
or on the fashion of her grey travelling-dress, there could not, as Mrs
Snow rather sharply remarked, "have been more fuss made about it." And
she had a chance to know, for the deacon's house was the scene of their
labours of love. For Mrs Snow declared "she wouldna have the minister
and Miss Graeme fashed with nonsense, more than all their proposed jaunt
would do them good, and so what couldna be redone there needna be done
at all."

But Mrs Snow's interest and delight in all the preparations were too
real and manifest, to permit any of the willing helpers to be offended
at her sharpness. In her heart Mrs Snow was greatly pleased, and owned
as much in private, but in public, "saw no good in making a work about
it," and, on behalf of the minister and his daughter, accepted the
kindness of the people as their proper right and due. When Mrs Page
identified herself with their affairs, and made a journey to Rixford for
the purpose of procuring the latest Boston fashion for sleeves, before
Graeme's dress should be made, she preserved the distant civility of
manner, with which that lady's advances were alw