electrify Mr.
John Boynton this very evening. True it is that short sleeves are not
the most sensible things for November; but Lizzy was twenty, and had
such round, white arms, that she liked to wear short sleeves, as any
girl would; and who is going to blame her? Not I! A girl doesn't know
her privileges who was never just a little vain,--just a little glad to
be pretty when John is by. Lizzy looked at the crimson merino, and at
the smart slippers on the door with a shining black bow on each instep.
There, too, on a little low table, was a green box; somebody had left
it open,--mother, perhaps,--so she saw on its cotton bed a red coral
bracelet, that came from Roxbury, or thereabout, last year at this time.
Lizzy shut up the box, and went down-stairs to get tea.

Chloe was indignant to think "Miss 'Lisbeth" thought she couldn't get
supper without help, and Miss 'Lisbeth was vexed with Chloe for being
cross. And then, when supper came, the tea seemed to be very unwilling
to be swallowed, and the new bread was full of large lumps that choked a
person, and the lamps didn't burn clearly at all,--and--and--when Chloe,
still sulky, had cleared the table, Lizzy sat down on a low cricket
beside her mother's stuffed rocking-chair, and had as good a cry as ever
she had in her life, and felt much better for it.

So she sat there, with her head on the arm of the chair, rather tired
with the cry, rather downhearted for want of the supper she hadn't
eaten, and making pictures in the fire, when all of a sudden it came
into her head to wonder what they were doing at Coventry. There was
grandfather, no doubt, in the keeping-room, telling his never-tiring
stories of Little Robby, and Old Bose, and the Babes in the Wood; of
singing the ever-new ditty of

"Did you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,"--

and so on, _ad infinitum_, till you got to--

"See a man eat a whale?"

to some half dozen children; while sweet Aunt Lizzy, serenely smiling,
rocked the fair little baby that fifteen cousins had kissed for welcome
that day; and Uncle Boynton trotted the baby's brother on his knee,
inviting him persistently to go to Boston and buy a penny-cake, greatly
to little Eben's aggravation, who would end, Lizzy knew, by crying for
the cake, and being sent to bed. Then there were Sam, and Lucy Peters,
and Jim Boynton, up to all sorts of mischief in the kitchen,--Susan
Boynton and Nelly James cracking nuts and their fingers on the
he