pping open her eyes, "considered as a mere piece of
economy, you bought a red dress for when you are immediately going into
black, passes common-sense to conjecture! You had better send it down
and have it dyed at once before you cut it, for the shrinkage will spoil
it forever if you don't."

"Much black I shall go into," said Mel.

Maria laughed. Aunt Pen cried.

"Aunt Pen," said the cruel Mel, "if you were going to die you wouldn't
be crying. Dying people have no tears to shed, the doctors say."

"Somebody ought to cry," said poor Aunt Pen, witheringly. "Don't talk to
me about doctors," she continued, after a silence interrupted only by
the snipping of the scissors. "They are a set of quacks. They know
nothing. I will have all the doctors in town at my funeral for
pall-bearers. It will be a satire too delicate for them to appreciate,
though. Speaking of that occasion, Helen," she went on, turning to me as
a possible ally, "I have so many friends that I suppose the house will
be full."

"Wouldn't you enjoy it more from church, auntie?" said I.

"Oh, you hard and wicked girls!" she cried. "You're all alike. Listen to
me! If you won't hear my wishes, you must take my commands. Now, in the
first place, I want the parlors to be overflowing with flowers,
literally lined with flowers. I don't care how much money it takes;
there'll be enough left for you--more than you deserve. And I want you
to be very sure that I'm not to be exposed unless I look exactly as I'd
like to look. You're to put on my white silk that I was to have been
married in, and my veil, and the false orange blossoms. They're all in
the third drawer of the press, and the key's on my chatelaine. And
if--if--well," said Aunt Pen, more to herself than us, "if he comes,
he'll understand. The Bride of Death."

After that she did not say any more for some minutes, and we were all
silent and sorry, and Mel was fidgeting in a riot of repentance; we had
never, either of us, heard a word of any romance of Aunt Pen's before.
We began to imagine that there might be some excuse for the overthrow of
Aunt Pen's nervous system, some reality in the overthrow. "You will
leave this ring on my finger;" said she; by-and-by. "If Chauncey Read
comes, and wants it, he will take it off. It will fit his finger as well
now, I suppose, as it did when he wore it before he gave it to me." Then
Aunt Pen bit her lip and shut her eyes, and seemed to be slipping off
into a gentle sle