Guy was exceedingly particular, and developed a wonderful proclivity to find fault with everything I admired.  Nothing was quite the thing for Daisy until at last a manufacturer offered to get one up which should suit, and so the carpet question was happily ended for the time being.  Then came the furniture, and unlimited orders were given to the upholsterer to do his best, and matters were progressing finely when order number two came from the little lady, who was sorry to seem so fickle, but mamma, whose taste was perfect, had decided against all blue, and would Guy please furnish the room with drab trimmed with blue.  “It must be a very delicate shade of drab,” she wrote, and lest he should get too intense an idea, she would call it a tint of a shade of drab, or, better yet, a hint of a tint of a shade of drab would describe exactly what she meant, and be so entirely unique, and lovely, and recherche.

Guy never swears, and seldom uses slang of any kind, but this was a little too much, and with a most rueful expression of countenance he asked me “what in thunder I supposed a hint of a tint of a shade of drab could be.”

I could not enlighten him, and we finally concluded to leave it to the upholsterer, to whom Guy telegraphed in hot haste, bidding him hunt New York over for the desired shade.  Where he found it I never knew, but find it he did, or something approximating to it, a faded, washed-out color, which seemed a cross between wood-ashes and pale skim milk.  A sample was sent up for Guy’s approval, and then the work commenced again, when order number three came in one of those dainty little billets which used to make Guy’s face radiant with happiness.  Daisy had changed her mind again and gone back to the blue, which she always preferred as most becoming to her complexion.

Guy did not say a single word, but he took the next train for New York and stayed there till the furniture was done and packed for Cuylerville.  As I did not know where he was stopping, I could not forward him two little missives which came during his absence, and which bore the Indianapolis post-mark.  I suspect he had a design in keeping his hotel from me, and whether Daisy changed her mind again or not I never knew.

The furniture reached Elmwood the day but one before Guy started for his bride, and Julia Hamilton, who was then at the Towers, helped me arrange the room, which is a perfect little gem and cannot fail to please, I am sure.  I wonder Guy never fancied Julia Hamilton.  Oh, if he only had done so I should not have as many misgivings as I now have nor dread the future so much.  Julia is sensible and twenty years old, and lives in Boston, and comes of a good family, and is every way suitable; but when did a man ever choose the woman whom his sister thought suitable for him?  And Guy is like other men, and this is his wedding day; and after a trip to Montreal, and Quebec, and Boston, and New York, and Saratoga, they are coming home, and I am to give a grand reception and then subside, I suppose, into the position of the “old maid sister who will be dreadfully in the way.”