it is, why, we must think, if we want to look well.  Now peach-trees, I s’pose, might bear just as good peaches without the pink blows, but then who would want ’em to?  Miss Deacon Twitchel, when I was up there the other day, kept kind o’ sighin’ ’cause Cerintha Ann is getting a new pink silk made up, ’cause she said it was such a dying world it didn’t seem right to call off our attention:  but I told her it wasn’t any pinker than the apple-blossoms; and what with robins and blue-birds and one thing or another, the Lord is always calling off our attention; and I think we ought to observe the Lord’s works and take a lesson from ’em.”

“Yes, you are quite right,” said Mrs. Scudder, rising and shaking out a splendid white brocade, on which bunches of moss-roses were looped to bunches of violets by graceful fillets of blue ribbons.  “This was my wedding-dress,” she said.

Little Miss Prissy sprang up and clapped her hands in an ecstasy.

“Well, now, Miss Scudder, really!—­did I ever see anything more beautiful?  It really goes beyond anything I ever saw.  I don’t think, in all the brocades I ever made up, I ever saw so pretty a pattern as this.”

“Mr. Scudder chose it for me, himself, at the silk-factory in Lyons,” said Mrs. Scudder, with pardonable pride, “and I want it tried on to Mary.”

“Really, Miss Scudder, this ought to be kept for her wedding-dress,” said Miss Prissy, as she delightedly bustled about the congenial task.  “I was up to Miss Marvyn’s, a-working, last week,” she said, as she threw the dress over Mary’s head, “and she said that James expected to make his fortune in that voyage, and come home and settle down.”

Mary’s fair head emerged from the rustling folds of the brocade, her cheeks crimson as one of the moss-roses,—­while her mother’s face assumed a severe gravity, as she remarked that she believed James had been much pleased with Jane Spencer, and that, for her part, she should be very glad, when he came home, if he could marry such a steady, sensible girl, and settle down to a useful, Christian life.

“Ah, yes,—­just so,—­a very excellent idea, certainly,” said Miss Prissy.  “It wants a little taken in here on the shoulders, and a little under the arms.  The biases are all right; the sleeves will want altering, Miss Scudder.  I hope you will have a hot iron ready for pressing.”

Mrs. Scudder rose immediately, to see the command obeyed; and as her back was turned, Miss Prissy went on in a low tone,—­

“Now, I, for my part, don’t think there’s a word of truth in that story about James Marvyn and Jane Spencer; for I was down there at work one day when he called, and I know there couldn’t have been anything between them,—­besides, Miss Spencer, her mother, told me there wasn’t.—­There, Miss Scudder, you see that is a good fit.  It’s astonishing how near it comes to fitting, just as it was.  I didn’t think Mary was so near what