“She’ll marry and go away in a big car, too,” said Bud, as he looked down and flecked an imaginary speck from the sleeve of his new coat.  Something in his voice made me determine to introduce Belle Proctor’s little sixteen-year-old sister to Bud in the near future.  The kiddie spends half her time away from school in Bess’s conservatory with Mr. G. Bird’s non-resident family, and I think it will do her good to come out in the field and play with Bud.  She is frail and too slight.

“Say, Miss Nancy, what do you think of this here purple to set me off?” asked Mr. Spain, as he held up the garment of his wife’s desire.  “Betty says it’ll match out her dimity, and I ’low to match Betty as long as I can.”

“It’ll be the very thing, Mr. Spain,” I said, as I controlled my horror at the flaring-colored coat and reminded myself that harmony of domestic relations is greater than any harmony of art.

“Now, pick your coats and slip ’em on, all of you, so Nancy can judge you,” commanded the general.  In a very short time each man had got out of his overall jumper and into his heart’s desire.

A stalwart, comely, clean-eyed group of American men they were as they stood on parade, clothed for the most part in seemly raiment, chosen with Uncle Silas’s quiet taste, except in the case of Mr. Spain, where he had let his experience of the past lead his taste.

“Please, dear God, don’t let them ever have to be put into khaki,” I prayed with a quick breath, for I knew, though they did not seem to recognize the fact, that this rally of the rural districts in the city hall was a part of the great program of preparedness that America was having forced upon her.  I knew that the speech of the governor would be about the State militia and I knew that Evan Baldwin would talk to them about the mobilization of their stocks and crops.  Quick tears flooded across my eyes, and I stretched out my hands to them.

“You all look good to me,” I faltered in some of Matthew’s language, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say but the prayer in my heart, and I didn’t want to repeat that to them.

“Now, you have all passed your city examinations, so you can get back to work.  Remember, that day after to-morrow is the junket, and one day won’t be any too much to bank up your fires to run until you come back,” said Aunt Mary in the way of dismissal.

“Talk about vanity in women folks?  The first peacock hatched out was of the male persuasion,” she remarked as we stood at the emporium door and watched the men dispersing, their bundles under their arms, each one making direct for his own front door.  “Every woman in Riverfield will have to put down needle and fry-pan and butter-paddle to feed them so plum full of compliments that they’ll strut for a week.  Bless my heart, honeybunch, we have all got to turn around twice in each track to get ready, and as I’m pretty hefty I must begin right now.”  With this remark, Aunt Mary departed from the back door to her house on the hill and sent me out the front to Elmnest opposite.