“There, Lurindy,” says I, “John told me to tell you to have your wedding-dress ready against he came home,—­he’s gone mate,—­and here it is.”  And I unrolled the neatest brown silk you ever saw, just fit for Lurindy, she’s so pale and genteel, and threw it into her lap.  I’d stayed the other month to get enough to buy it.

The first thing Lurindy did, by way of thanks, was to burst into tears and declare she never could take it, that she never should marry now; and the more I urged her, the more she cried.  But at last she said she’d accept it conditionally,—­and the condition was, I should be married when she was.

“Well,” says I, “agreed, if you’ll provide the necessary article; because I can’t very well marry my shadow, and I don’t know any one else that would be fool enough to have such a little fright.”

At that Lurindy felt all the worse, and it took all the spirits I had to build up hers and mother’s.  I suppose I was sorry to see they felt so bad, (and they hadn’t meant that I should,) because it gave the finishing stroke to my conviction; and after I was in bed, I grew sorrier still; and if I cried, ’t wasn’t on account of myself, but I saw how Lurindy ’d always feel self-accused, though she hadn’t ought to, whenever she looked at me, and how all her life she’d feel my scarred face like a weight on her happiness, and think I owed it to John, and how intolerable such an obligation, though it was only a fancied one, would be; and I saw, too, that it all came from my not going up-stairs that first time when Stephen knocked,—­because if I had gone, I should have been there when the doctor came, and Lurindy ’d have gone to have taken care of John herself, and it would have been her face that was ruined instead of mine; and though it was a great deal better that it should be mine, still she’d have been easier in her mind;—­and so thinking and worrying, I fell asleep.

Next day was baking-day, and Stephen was coming in the afternoon, and it was almost five o’clock when we got cleared up, and I went up-stairs to change my dress.  I thought ’t wasn’t any use to trim myself out in bows and ruffles now, so I just put on my brown gingham and a white linen collar; but Lurindy came and tied a pink ribbon at my throat, and fixed my hair herself, and looked down and said,—­

“Well, I don’t see but you’re about as pretty as ever you was.”

That almost finished me; but I contrived to laugh, and got down-stairs.  Mother ’d run over to the village to get some yarn to knit up, for she ’d used all our own wool.  It was getting dark, and I had just brought in another log, and hung the kettle on the crane.  The log hadn’t taken fire yet, and there was only a light glimmer, from the coals, on the ceiling.  I heard the back-door-latch click, and thought it was mother, and commenced humming in the middle of a tune, as if I’d been humming the rest and had just reached that part; but the figure standing there was a sight too tall for mother.