“Barbara, my darling!  But you’ve nothing ready!”

“No, I suppose not.  I never do have.  Everything is an emergency with me; but I always emerge!  I can get things in London,” she added.  “Everybody does.”

The end of it was that Mrs. Holabird had to catch her breath again, as mothers do; and that Barbara is getting ready to be married just as she does everything else.

Rose has some nice things—­laid away, new; she always has; and mother has unsuspected treasures; and we all had new silk dresses for Leslie’s wedding, and Ruth had a bright idea about that.

“I’m as tall as either of you, now,” she said; “and we girls are all of a size, as near as can be, mother and all; and we’ll just wear the dresses once more, you see, and then put them right into Barbara’s trunk.  They’ll be all the bonnier and luckier for her, I know.  We can get others any time.”

We laughed at her at first; but we came round afterward to think that it was a good plan.  Rosamond’s silk was a lovely violet, and Ruth’s was blue; Barbara’s own was pearly gray; we were glad, now, that no two of us had dressed alike.  The violet and the gray had been chosen because of our having worn quiet black-and-white all summer for grandfather.  We had never worn crape; or what is called “deep” mourning.  “You shall never do that,” said mother, “till the deep mourning comes.  Then you will choose for yourselves.”

We have had more time than we expected.  There has been some beautiful delay or other about machinery,—­the Katahdin’s, that is; and Commander Shapleigh has been ever so kind.  Harry has been back and forth to New York two or three times.  Once he took Stephen with him; Steve stayed at Uncle John’s; but he was down at the yard, and on board ships, and got acquainted with some midshipmen; and he has quite made up his mind to try to get in at the Naval Academy as soon as he is old enough, and to be a navy officer himself.

We are comfortable at home; not hurried after all.  We are determined not to be; last days are too precious,

“Don’t let’s be all taken up with ‘things,’” says Barbara.  “I can buy ‘things’ any time.  But now,—­I want you!”

Aunt Roderick’s present helped wonderfully.  It was magnanimous of her; it was coals of fire.  We should have believed she was inspired,—­or possessed,—­but that Ruth went down to Boston with her.

There came home, in a box, two days after, from Jordan and Marsh’s, the loveliest “suit,” all made and finished, of brown poplin.  To think of Aunt Roderick’s getting anything made, at an “establishment”!  But Ruth says she put her principles into her unpickable pocket, and just took her porte-monnaie in her hand.

Bracelets and pocket-handkerchiefs have come from New York; all the “girls” here in Westover have given presents of ornaments, or little things to wear; they know there is no housekeeping to provide for.  Barbara says her trousseau “flies together”; she just has to sit and look at it.