found the poster worked so good, I thought it might keep other people
from comin' a-botherin' around, and so I left it up; but I was a-goin'
to be sure and take it down before you came."

As it was now pretty late in the afternoon, I proposed that Pomona
should postpone the rest of her narrative until evening. She said that
there was nothing else to tell that was very particular; and I did not
feel as if I could stand anything more just now, even if it was very
particular.

When we were alone, I said to Euphemia:

"If we ever have to go away from this place again--"

"But we wont go away," she interrupted, looking up to me with as bright
a face as she ever had, "at least not for a long, long, long time to
come. And I'm so glad you're to be a vestryman."

CHAPTER XIV. POMONA TAKES A BRIDAL TRIP.

Our life at Rudder Grange seemed to be in no way materially changed by
my becoming a vestryman. The cow gave about as much milk as before, and
the hens laid the usual number of eggs. Euphemia went to church with a
little more of an air, perhaps, but as the wardens were never absent,
and I was never, therefore, called upon to assist in taking up the
collection, her sense of my position was not inordinately manifested.

For a year or two, indeed, there was no radical change in anything about
Rudder Grange, except in Pomona. In her there was a change. She grew up.

She performed this feat quite suddenly. She was a young girl when she
first came to us, and we had never considered her as anything else, when
one evening she had a young man to see her. Then we knew she had grown
up.

We made no objections to her visitors,--she had several, from time to
time,--"for," said Euphemia, "suppose my parents had objected to your
visits." I could not consider the mere possibility of anything like
this, and we gave Pomona all the ordinary opportunities for entertaining
her visitors. To tell the truth, I think we gave her more than the
ordinary opportunities. I know that Euphemia would wait on herself to
almost any extent, rather than call upon Pomona, when the latter was
entertaining an evening visitor in the kitchen or on the back porch.

"Suppose my mother," she once remarked, in answer to a mild remonstrance
from me in regard to a circumstance of this nature,--"suppose my mother
had rushed into our presence when we were plighting our vows, and had
told me to go down into the cellar and crack ice!"

It was of no use to talk