Such patient manipulation, such sudden retirings for the study of effects, such delicious little experiments with a curl, such shifting of hair-pins, such dainty adjustments of ruffles and frills as were indulged in in that little room can only be imagined by the sex familiar with them.  And then, in the midst of it all, came a scream of delight that stopped everything.  Mrs. Balfour had sent in a great box full of the most exquisite flowers, which she had brought all the way from the city.  The youngest Miss Snow was wild with her new wealth, and there were roses for Miss Butterworth’s hair, and her throat, and a bouquet for her hand.  And after this came wonderful accessions to the refreshment table.  Cake, with Miss Butterworth’s initials; tarts, marked “Number Nine,” and Charlotte de Russe, with a “B” and an “F” hopelessly twisted together in a monogram.  The most excited exclamations reached Miss Butterworth’s ears in her imprisonment: 

“Goodness, gracious me!”

“If there isn’t another cake as big as a flour barrel!”

“Tell your mother she’s an angel.  She’s coming down to help us eat it, I hope.”

“Just look at this basket of little cakes!  I was saying to mother this minute that that was all we wanted.”

So the good things came, and the cheerful givers went, and Miss Butterworth took an occasional sip at her coffee, with a huge napkin at her throat, and tears in her eyes, not drawn forth by the delicate tortures in progress upon her person.  She thought of her weary years of service, her watchings by sick-beds, her ministry to the poor, her long loneliness, and acknowledged to herself that her reward had come.  To be so loved and petted, and cared for, and waited upon, was payment for every sacrifice and every service, and she felt that she and the world were at quits.

Before the finishing touches to her toilet were given, there was a tumult at the door.  She could hear new voices.  The guests were arriving.  She heard laughter and merry greetings; and still they poured in, as if they had come in a procession.  Then there was a hush, followed by the sound of a carriage, the letting down of steps, and a universal murmur.  Jim had arrived, with Mr. and Mrs. Balfour and the boys.  They had had great difficulty in getting him into the one hackney coach which the village possessed, on account of his wish to ride with the driver, “a feller as he knowed;” but he was overruled by Mrs. Balfour, who, on alighting, took his arm.  He came up the garden walk, smiling in the faces and eyes of those gathered around the door and clustered at the windows.  In his wedding dress, he was the best figure in the crowd, and many were the exclamations of feminine admiration.

On entering the door, he looked about him, saw the well-dressed and expectant company, the dainty baskets of flowers, the bountifully loaded table in the little dining-room, all the preparations for his day of happiness, but he saw nowhere the person who gave to him the significance of the occasion.