party.

So this St. Victoria's day was a great day of preparation for Huldah,
if she had only known its name, as she did not. For she was of the kind
which prepares in time, not of the kind that is caught out when the
company come with the work half done. And as John started on his
collection beat that morning at about the hour Robert, in town, kissed
Mary good-by, Huldah stood on the step with him, and looked with
satisfaction on the gathering snow, because it would make better
sleighing the next day for her father and mother to come over. She
charged him not to forget her box of raisins when he came back, and to
ask at the express if anything came up from town, bade him good-by, and
turned back into the house, not wholly dissatisfied to be almost alone.
She washed her baby, gave him his first lunch and put him to bed. Then,
with the coast fairly clear,--what woman does not enjoy a clear coast,
if it only be early enough in the morning?--she dipped boldly and wisely
into her flour-barrel, stripped her plump round arms to their work, and
began on the pie-crust which was to appear to-morrow in the fivefold
forms of apple, cranberry, Marlboro', mince, and squash,--careful and
discriminating in the nice chemistry of her mixtures and the nice
manipulations of her handicraft, but in nowise dreading the issue. A
long, active, lively morning she had of it. Not dissatisfied with the
stages of her work, step by step she advanced, stage by stage she
attained of the elaborate plan which was well laid out in her head, but,
of course, had never been intrusted to words, far less to tell-tale
paper. From the oven at last came the pies,--and she was satisfied with
the color; from the other oven came the turkey, which she proposed to
have cold,--as a relay, or _piece de resistance_, for any who might not
be at hand at the right moment for dinner. Into the empty oven went the
clove-blossoming ham, which, as it boiled, had given the least
appetizing odor to the kitchen. In the pretty moulds in the woodshed
stood the translucent cranberry hardening to its fixed consistency. In
other moulds the obedient calf's foot already announced its willingness
and intention to "gell" as she directed. Huldah's decks were cleared
again, her kitchen table fit to cut out "work" upon,--all the pans and
plates were put away, which accumulate so mysteriously where cooking is
going forward; on its nail hung the weary jigger, on its hook the spicy
grater, on th