ear
your wedding gown before the day. So at one time Miss Arabella had put
on the billowy skirt with her lilac waist; and at another the blue silk
blouse with her old gingham skirt, and even then she had been seized
with such a fit of trembling that Elsie Cameron had to hold her up.

The dressmaking had been carried on in a large empty room above the
doctor's surgery, and when it was finished Miss Arabella left the gown
there. She dared not take it home, for fear Susan would discover it.
So Mrs. Munn wrapped it carefully in a sheet and hung it behind the
door. There were bunches of dried sage and mint and lavender hanging
along the low rafters above it, and just to move the wedding dress gave
one a whiff as sweet as a breath from all the spices of Araby.

Often, when Dr. Allen drove away, Miss Arabella would run over to Mrs.
Munn's, and up the back stairs, for a look at the gown, just to
convince herself that it had not been merely a beautiful dream. It was
something tangible, the outward and visible sign that her happiness was
real. For hours afterward she would go about her work in a kind of
blissful daze, until Susan declared it was a caution how Arabella
forgot things, and she wondered what on earth was the matter with her.
She looked well enough, but sometimes her appetite was bad, and she,
Susan, had a good mind to take her over to Dr. Allen, and see if he
couldn't cure her up in a day, the way he did last fall.

Arabella had another mysterious source of forgetfulness. When Susan's
watchfulness kept her from visiting Mrs. Munn's lumber room, she would
slip away into her spare bedroom, shut the door, and taking out two
letters from her top drawer, would sit down and read them again and
again. The last letter was always convincing; it breathed Martin's
strong, joyous spirit from every line, and drove away all fears. It
had come promptly in answer to hers, and had been sent under cover to
Mrs. Munn, for fear Ella Anne's curiosity might again be aroused.

Martin evidently retained his old rollicking spirits, for he fell in
most cordially with the plan for eloping. It suited him down to the
ground, he declared. He would come to Lakeview on the last night of
May, and early in the morning of the first of June he would drive out
in the finest livery rig the place possessed, and away they would fly,
without a howd'ye-do to any one. But they must come back for a little
visit after their honeymoon, for there wa