it a young wife."

"Nonsense, Gracie; no such thing!" said John. "Do you suppose I want
to leave all the past associations of my life, and strip my home bare
of all pleasant memorials, because I bring a little wife here? Why,
the very idea of a wife is somebody to sympathize in your tastes; and
Lillie will love and appreciate all these dear old things as you and
I do. She has such a sympathetic heart! If you want to make me happy,
Gracie, stay here, and let us live, as near as may be, as before."

"So we will, John," said Grace, so cheerfully that John considered the
whole matter as settled, and rushed upstairs to write his daily letter
to Lillie.

CHAPTER IV.

_PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE_.

Miss Lillie Ellis was sitting upstairs in her virgin bower, which was
now converted into a tumultuous, seething caldron of millinery and
mantua-making, such as usually precedes a wedding. To be sure, orders
had been forthwith despatched to Paris for the bridal regimentals, and
for a good part of the _trousseau_; but that did not seem in the
least to stand in the way of the time-honored confusion of sewing
preparations at home, which is supposed to waste the strength and
exhaust the health of every bride elect.

Whether young women, while disengaged, do not have proper
under-clothing, or whether they contemplate marriage as an awful
gulf which swallows up all future possibilities of replenishing a
wardrobe,--certain it is that no sooner is a girl engaged to be
married than there is a blind and distracting rush and pressure and
haste to make up for her immediately a stock of articles, which, up to
that hour, she has managed to live very comfortably and respectably
without. It is astonishing to behold the number of inexpressible
things with French names which unmarried young ladies never think
of wanting, but which there is a desperate push to supply, and have
ranged in order, the moment the matrimonial state is in contemplation.

Therefore it was that the virgin bower of Lillie was knee-deep in a
tangled mass of stuffs of various hues and description; that the sharp
sound of tearing off breadths resounded there; that Miss Clippins and
Miss Snippings and Miss Nippins were sewing there day and night; that
a sewing-machine was busily rattling in mamma's room; and that there
were all sorts of pinking and quilling, and braiding and hemming,
and whipping and ruffling, and over-sewing and cat-stitching and
hem-stitching, and o