Chapter 2 - Page 2

attire herself.

Down-stairs, Miss Belinda was wavering between the kitchen and the
parlor, in a kindly flutter.

"Toast some muffins, Mary Anne, and bring in the cold roast fowl," she
said. "And I will put out some strawberry-jam, and some of the preserved
ginger. Dear me! Just to think how fond of preserved ginger poor Martin
was, and how little of it he was allowed to eat! There really seems a
special Providence in my having such a nice stock of it in the house when
his daughter comes home."

In the course of half an hour every thing was in readiness; and then Mary
Anne, who had been sent up-stairs to announce the fact, came down in a
most remarkable state of delighted agitation, suppressed ecstasy and
amazement exclaiming aloud in every feature.

"She's dressed, mum," she announced, "an' 'll be down immediate," and
retired to a shadowy corner of the kitchen passage, that she might lie in
wait unobserved.

Miss Belinda, sitting behind the tea-service, heard a soft, flowing,
silken rustle sweeping down the staircase, and across the hall, and then
her niece entered.

"Don't you think I've dressed pretty quick?" she said, and swept across
the little parlor, and sat down in her place, with the calmest and most
unconscious air in the world.

There was in Slowbridge but one dressmaking establishment. The head of
the establishment--Miss Letitia Chickie--designed the costumes of every
woman in Slowbridge, from Lady Theobald down. There were legends that she
received her patterns from London, and modified them to suit the
Slowbridge taste. Possibly this was true; but in that case her labors as
modifier must have been severe indeed, since they were so far modified as
to be altogether unrecognizable when they left Miss Chickie's
establishment, and were borne home in triumph to the houses of her
patrons. The taste of Slowbridge was quiet,--upon this Slowbridge prided
itself especially,--and, at the same time, tended toward economy. When
gores came into fashion, Slowbridge clung firmly, and with some pride, to
substantial breadths, which did not cut good silk into useless strips
which could not be utilized in after-time; and it was only when, after a
visit to London, Lady Theobald walked into St. James's one Sunday with
two gores on each side, that Miss Chickie regretfully put scissors into
her first breadth. Each matronly member of good society possessed a
substantial silk gown of some sober color, which gown, having done duty
at two years' tea-parties, descended to the grade of "second-best," and
so descended, year by year, until it disappeared into the dim distance of
the past. The young ladies had their white muslins and