heme.

After this tribute, such as they could pay to the holier character of
the day and the reminder of home, the festivity and jollity began. The
introduction was auspicious and touched the sense of the picturesque of
those to whom life was wont to show but a sordid aspect. The settlers
were pleased with the pomp and ceremony of their reception, genuinely
delighted with the effect of the carols and the summoning up of old
memories and homing thoughts so tenderly stirred, satisfied with
themselves and disposed to admire each other.

One would hardly have believed that there was so much finery in the
settlement--of different dates and fashions, it is true, and various
nationalities. The wife of one settler wore a good gown of brocade,
although her husband seemed quite assured in his buckskins. Two or three
heads were held the higher from a proud consciousness of periwigs[7] and
powder. Mrs. Halsing had a tall, curious comb of filigree silver and
great silver ear-rings, a sad-colored stuff gown, but a queer foreign
apron across which were two straight bands of embroidery of a pattern
and style that might have graced a museum; Odalie, the expert,
determined that the day was not far distant when she should sue for the
privilege of examining the stitch. She herself was clad in the
primrose-flowered paduasoy, with a petticoat of dark red satin and all
her Mechlin lace for a fichu, while pearls--her grand'maman's
necklace--were in her dark hair. Mrs. Beedie had woven her own frock
with her own sturdy hands, and with a fresh mob-cap on her head and a
very fresh rose on her cheek actively danced the whole night through.

The widow of the man who had come hither to forward his passion for the
ministry to the Indian savages, and who had lost his life in the
fruitless effort, now probably deemed dissent a grievous folly and had
returned to earlier ways of thinking and conventional standards. She
wore no weeds--one could not here alter the fashion of one's dress, the
immutable thing, for so transitory a matter as grief. She regarded the
scene with the face of one who has little share, although she wore a
puce-colored satin with some fine lace frills and a modish cap on her
thin hair.

But the daughter! With a lordly carriage of her delicate head that might
have been reminiscent of her grandfather, the bishop, and yet joyous
girlish red lips, full and smiling and set about with deep dimples; with
her hair of red-gold, and sapphi