We do not claim for her any superhuman exemption from girlish feelings.  She was innocently dazzled with the vision of courtly halls and princely splendors, and thought Mrs. Adams’s descriptions almost a perfect realization of things she had read in “Sir Charles Grandison.”  If her mother thought it right and proper she should be dressed and made fine, she was glad of it; only there came a heavy, leaden feeling in her little heart, which she did not understand, but we who know womankind will translate for you:  it was, that a certain pair of dark eyes would not see her after she was dressed; and so, after all, what was the use of looking pretty?

“I wonder what James would think,” passed through her head; for Mary had never changed a ribbon, or altered the braid of her hair, or pinned a flower in her bosom, that she had not quickly seen the effect of the change mirrored in those dark eyes.  It was a pity, of course, now she had found out that she ought not to think about him, that so many thought-strings were twisted round him.

So while Miss Prissy turned over her papers, and read out of others extracts about Lord Caermarthen and Sir Clement Cotterel Dormer and the Princess Royal and Princess Augusta, in black and silver, with a silver netting upon the coat, and a head stuck full of diamond pins,—­and Lady Salisbury and Lady Talbot and the Duchess of Devonshire, and scarlet satin sacks and diamonds and ostrich-plumes, and the King’s kissing Mrs. Adams,—­little Mary’s blue eyes grew larger and larger, seeing far off on the salt green sea, and her ears heard only the ripple and murmur of those waters that earned her heart away,—­till, by-and-by, Miss Prissy gave her a smart little tap, which awakened her to the fact that she was wanted again to try on the dress which Miss Prissy’s nimble fingers had basted.

So passed the day,—­Miss Prissy busily chattering, clipping, basting,—­Mary patiently trying on to an unheard-of extent,—­and Mrs. Scudder’s neat room whipped into a perfect froth and foam of gauze, lace, artificial flowers, linings, and other aids, accessories, and abetments.

At dinner, the Doctor, who had been all the morning studying out his Treatise on the Millennium, discoursed tranquilly as usual, innocently ignorant of the unusual cares which were distracting the minds of his listeners.  What should he know of dress-makers, good soul?  Encouraged by the respectful silence of his auditors, he calmly expanded and soliloquized on his favorite topic, the last golden age of Time, the Marriage-Supper of the Lamb, when the purified Earth, like a repentant Psyche, shall be restored to the long-lost favor of a celestial Bridegroom, and glorified saints and angels shall walk familiarly as wedding-guests among men.