Then they all sat down again, to talk over the matter of clothes.  Miss Butterworth did not wish to make herself ridiculous.

“I’ve said a thousand times, if I ever said it once,” she remarked, “that there’s no fool like an old fool.  Now, I don’t want to hear any nonsense about orange-blossoms, or about a veil.  If there’s anything that I do despise above board, it’s a bridal veil on an old maid.  And I’m not going to have a lot of things made up that I can’t use.  I’m just going to have a snug, serviceable set of clothes, and in three days I’m going to look as if I’d been married ten years.”

“It seems to me,” said Miss Snow, “that you ought to do something.  I’m sure, if I were in your place, that I should want to do something.”

The other girls tittered.

“Not that I ever expect to be in your place, or anything like it,” she went on, “but it does seem to me as if something extra ought to be done—­white kid gloves or something.”

“And white satin gaiters,” suggested the youngest sister.

“I guess you’d think Jim Fenton was extra enough if you knew him,” said Miss Butterworth, laughing.  “There’s plenty that’s extra, goodness knows! without buying anything.”

“Well,” persisted the youngest Miss Snow, “I’d have open-worked stockings, and have my hair frizzed, any way.”

“Oh, I speak to do your hair,” put in the second daughter.

“You’re just a lot of chickens, the whole of you,” said the tailoress.

Miss Snow, whose age was hovering about the confines of mature maidenhood, smiled a deprecating smile, and said that she thought she was about what they sold for chickens sometimes, and intimated that she was anything but tender.

“Well, don’t be discouraged; that’s all I have to say,” remarked Miss Butterworth.  “If I can get married, anybody can.  If anybody had told me that—­well isn’t it too ridiculous for anything?  Now, isn’t it?” And the little tailoress went off into another fit of laughter.  Then she jumped up and said she really must go.

The report that Jim Fenton was soon to lead to the hymeneal altar the popular village tailoress, spread with great rapidity, and as it started from the minister’s family, it had a good send-off, and was accompanied by information that very pleasantly modified its effect upon the public mind.  The men of the village who knew Jim a great deal better than the women, and who, in various ways, had become familiar with his plans for a hotel, and recognized the fact that his enterprise would make Sevenoaks a kind of thoroughfare for his prospective city-boarders, decided that she had “done well.”  Jim was enterprising, and, as they termed it, “forehanded.”  His habits were good, his industry indefatigable, his common sense and good nature unexampled.  Everybody liked Jim.  To be sure, he was rough and uneducated, but he was honorable and true.  He would make a good “provider.”  Miss Butterworth might have gone further and fared worse.  On the whole, it was a good thing; and they were glad for Jim’s sake and for Miss Butterworth’s that it had happened.