ll take hold, it won't be such an immense piece of work. Debby has
quantities of raisins stoned already. She has been doing them in the
evenings a few at a time for the last month. Mrs. Ashe knows a factory
where you can get the little white boxes for ten dollars a thousand, and I
have commissioned her to send for five hundred."

"Five hundred! What an immense quantity!"

"Yes; but there are all the Hillsover girls to be remembered, and all our
kith and kin, and everybody at the wedding will want one. I don't think it
will be too many. Oh, I have arranged it all in my mind. Johnnie will
slice the citron, Elsie will wash the currants, Debby measure and bake,
Alexander mix, you and I will attend to the icing, and all of us will cut
it up."

"Alexander!"

"Alexander. He is quite pleased with the idea, and has constructed an
implement--a sort of spade, cut out of new pine wood--for the purpose. He
says it will be a sight easier than digging flower-beds. We will set about
it next week; for the cake improves by keeping, and as it is the heaviest
job we have to do, it will be well to get it out of the way early."

"Sha'n't you have a floral bell, or a bower to stand in, or something of
that kind?" ventured Clover, timidly.

"Indeed I shall not," replied Katy. "I particularly dislike floral bells
and bowers. They are next worst to anchors and harps and 'floral pillows'
and all the rest of the dreadful things that they have at funerals. No, we
will have plenty of fresh flowers, but not in stiff arrangements. I want
it all to seem easy and to _be_ easy. Don't look so disgusted, Clovy."

"Oh, I'm not disgusted. It's your wedding. I want you to have everything
in your own way."

"It's everybody's wedding, I think," said Katy, tenderly. "Everybody is so
kind about it. Did you see the thing that Polly sent this morning?"

"No. It must have come after I went out. What was it?"

"Seven yards of beautiful nun's lace which she bought in Florence. She
says it is to trim a morning dress; but it's really too pretty. How dear
Polly is! She sends me something almost every day. I seem to be in her
thoughts all the time. It is because she loves Ned so much, of course;
but it is just as kind of her."

"I think she loves you almost as much as Ned," said Clover.

"Oh, she couldn't do that; Ned is her only brother. There is Amy at the
gate now."

It was a much taller Amy than had come home from Italy the year before who
was walking t