shawled, and to have her baggage put on the carriage. Then kindly
bidding Mr. Smith farewell, she gave her hand to his wife, escaping
the embrace in preparation for her, and was rapidly driven away.

"You see there are some persons who can appreciate Cousin Sabina,"
said Mr. Smith; and afraid to wait for a reply, he hastened to his
place of business.

"And so Cousin Sabina is the friend of Mrs. Morgan Silsbee, the friend
of Mrs. Goldsborough!" said Mrs. Smith to herself, while a series of
not very satisfactory reflections ran through her mind. But her
attention was claimed by other things. What with putting away and
distributing the fragments of the feast, washing and sending home
table-furniture, gathering up candle ends, and other onerous duties,
the day wore on. At last, late in the afternoon, with aching head and
wearied limbs, she sat down in her rocking-chair in the dining-room to
rest. A ring at the door-bell soon disturbed her. "Say I'm engaged,
unless it is some person very particular," said she to the servant.

"It is Miss Debby Coggins, ma'am," said the colored girl, returning,
with a grin; "I let her in, because she's very partic'lar."

Miss Deborah Coggins, from being connected in some way or other with
each of the great families of the town, and having money enough not to
be dependent on any of them, was what is called a privileged
character--a class of individuals hard to be endured, unless they
possess the specific virtue of good-nature, to which Miss Debby had no
claim. She talked without ceasing, and her motto was to speak "the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." She was of a thin
figure, always dressed in rusty black silk, which must sometimes have
been renewed or changed, though no one could ever tell when, and a
velvet bonnet, of the same hue, with a peculiar lateral flare, which,
however, was really made to look something like new once every three
or four years. She wore a demi-wreath of frizzly, flaxen curls close
above her shaggy eyebrows, which were of the same color; and her very
long, distended nose was always filled with snuff, which assisted in
giving a trombone sound to as harsh a voice as ever passed through the
lips of a woman.

She had drawn up the blinds, and opened the sash of the windows when
Mrs. Smith entered the front parlor. "How're you this evening, Mrs.
Smith?" said she, in answer to the bland welcome she received; "I was
just telling your black girl that if