extremely pleasing one, except to certain young men who feared for the
validity of their titles to their respective sweethearts should the
major chance to be affectionate.

But the major gave no cause for complaint. When he first came to the
village he bought Rose Cottage, opposite the splendid Wittleday
property, and he spent most of his time (his leave-of-absence always
occurring in the Summer season) in his garden, trimming his shrubs,
nursing his flowering-plants, growing magnificent roses, and in all ways
acting utterly unlike a man of blood. Occasionally he played a game of
chess with Parson Fisher, the jolly ex-clergyman, or smoked a pipe with
the sadler-postmaster; he attended all the East Patten tea-parties, too,
but he made himself so uniformly agreeable to all the ladies that the
mothers in Israel agreed with many sighs, that the major was not a
marrying man.

It may easily be imagined, then, that when one Summer the major
reappeared at East Patten with a brother officer who was young and
reasonably good-looking, the major's popularity did not diminish.

The young man was introduced as Lieutenant Doyson, who had once saved
the major's life by a lucky shot, as that chieftain, with empty pistols,
was trying to escape from a well-mounted Indian; and all the young
ladies in town declared they _knew_ the lieutenant _must_ have done
something wonderful, he was _so_ splendid.

But, with that fickleness which seems in some way communicable from
wicked cities to virtuous villages, East Patten suddenly ceased to
exhibit unusual interest in the pair of warriors, for a new excitement
had convulsed the village mind to its very centre.

It was whispered that Mrs. Wittleday, the sole and widowed owner of the
great Wittleday property, had wearied of the mourning she wore for the
husband she had buried two years previously, and that she would soon
publicly announce the fact by laying aside her weeds and giving a great
entertainment, to which every one was to be invited.

There was considerable high-toned deprecation of so early a cessation of
Mrs. Wittleday's sorrowing, she being still young and handsome, and
there was some fault found on the economic ground that the widow
couldn't yet have half worn out her mourning-garments; but as to the
propriety of her giving an entertainment, the voices of East Patten were
as one in the affirmative.

Such of the villagers as had chanced to sit at meat with the late Scott
Wittle