teep, narrow stairs. She spent the remaining hours before train-time in
donning her beautiful lace gown, and in making the woman within it as
young and ravishing as possible. And lovely, indeed, Blossy looked this
day, with a natural flush of excitement on her cheek, a new sparkle in
her bright, dark eyes, and with her white hair arranged in a fashion
which might have excited a young girl's envy.

The hour for the train came and went, and, lo! for the first time in the
history of twenty years Captain Darby did not appear.

Blossy pretended to be relieved, protesting that she was delighted to
find that she would now have an extra hour in which to ponder the
question. But the second train came and went, and still no Captain
Darby.

All the afternoon long Blossy wore her lace gown, thinking although
there were no more trains from the eastward that day, that Samuel would
still find his way to her. He might drive, as he usually did in June, or
he might even walk from his home at Twin Coves, she said.

At night, however, she was obliged to admit that he could not be coming;
and then, quivering with honest anxiety for her old friend, Blossy
dipped into her emergency fund, which she kept in the heart of a little
pink china pig on a shelf in her room,--a pink china pig with a lid made
of stiff black hair standing on edge in the middle of his back,--and
sent a telegram to Captain Darby, asking if he were sick.

The answer came back slowly by mail, to find Blossy on the verge of a
nervous collapse, under the care of all the women in the house.

That letter Blossy never showed to Brother Abe, nor to any one else.
Neither did she treasure it in the sentimental trunk beneath the attic
eaves. The letter ran:

DEAR BETSY ANN: I never felt better in my life. Ain't been sick a
minute. Just made up my mind I was a old fool, and was going to quit. If
you change your intentions at any time, just drop me a postal. As ever,

SAM'L DARBY, ESQ.

"This, Captain Darby, makes your rejection final," vowed Blossy to
herself, as she tore the note into fragments and drowned them in the
spirits of lavender with which the sisters had been seeking to soothe
her distracted nerves.

VIII

THE ANNIVERSARY

About this time Blossy developed a tendency to draw Brother Abraham
aside at every opportunity, convenient or inconvenient, in order to put
such questions as these to him:

"Did you say it is fully thirty-five years since you a