“Heavens!” faintly articulated Madam Conway, pressing her hands upon her head, which was supposed to be aching dreadfully.  The thought of Theo reposing beneath the “risin’ sun,” or yet the “herrin’-bone,” was intolerable; and looking beseechingly at Maggie, she whispered, “Do see if Mike is ready.”

“If it’s the carriage you mean,” chimed in Mrs. Douglas, “it’s been waiting quite a spell, but I thought you warn’t fit to ride yet, so I didn’t tell you.”

Starting to her feet, Madam Conway’s bonnet went on in a trice, and taking her shawl in her hand she walked outdoors, barely expressing her thanks to Mrs. Douglas, who, greatly distressed at her abrupt departure, ran for the herb tea, and taking the tin cup in her hand followed her guest to the carriage, urging her to “take a swaller just to keep from vomiting.”

“She is better without it,” said Maggie.  “She seldom takes medicine,” and politely expressing her gratitude to Mrs. Douglas for her kindness she bade Mike drive on.

“Some crazy critter just out of the asylum, I’ll bet,” said Mrs. Douglas, walking back to the house with her pennyroyal tea.  “How queer she acted! but that girl’s a lady, every inch of her, and so handsome too—­I wonder who she is?”

“Don’t you believe the old woman felt a little above us?” suggested Betsy Jane, who had more discernment than her mother.

“Like enough she did, though I never thought on’t.  But she needn’t.  I’m as good as she is, and I’ll warrant as much thought on, where I’m known;” and quite satisfied with her own position, Mrs. Douglas went back to her dish-washing, while Betsy Jane stole away upstairs to try the experiment of arranging her hair after the fashion in which Margaret wore hers.

In the meantime Mike, perfectly sobered, had turned his horses’ heads in the direction of Hillsdale, when Madam Conway called out, “To Worcester, Mike—­to Worcester, as fast as you can drive.”

“To Worcester!  For what?” asked Maggie, and the excited woman answered:  “To stop it!  To forbid the banns!  I should think you’d ask for what!”

“To stop it,” repeated Maggie.  “I’d like to see you stop it, when they’ve been married two months!”

“So they have! so they have!” said Madam Conway, wringing her hands in her despair, and crying out that a Conway should be so disgraced.  “What shall I do?  What shall I do?”

“Make the best of it, of course,” answered Maggie.  “I don’t see that George is any worse for his parentage.  He is evidently greatly respected in Worcester, where his family are undoubtedly known.  He is educated and refined, if they are not.  Theo loves him, and that is sufficient, unless I add that he has money.”

“But not as much as I supposed,” moaned Madam Conway.  “Theo told me two hundred thousand dollars; but that woman said one.  Oh, what will become of me!  Give me the hartshorn, Maggie.  I feel so faint!”

The hartshorn was handed her, but it could not quiet her distress.  Her family pride was sorely wounded, and had Theo been dead she would hardly have felt worse than she did.