Then Lucinda colored.  “Why, folks would talk,” said she.

“Let them.  I don’t care; do you?”

“Albion Bennet, I’m a lot older than you.  I ain’t old enough to be your mother, but I’m a good deal older than you.”

“I don’t care,” said Albion.  “I know how old you are.  I don’t care.  I’d enough sight rather have you than those young things that keep racing to my store.  When I get you I shall know what I’ve got, and when I’ve got them I shouldn’t know.  I’d rather have heavy bread, or dry bread, and know it was bread, than new-fangled things that ain’t a mite more wholesome, and you don’t know what you’ve got.  I don’t know how you feel, Lucinda, but I ain’t one who could ever marry somebody he hadn’t summered and wintered.  I’ve summered and wintered you, and you’ve summered and wintered me.  I don’t know how much falling in love there is for either of us, but I reckon we can get on together and have a good home, and that’s what love-making has to wind up in, if the mainspring don’t break and all the works bust.  I’m making quite a little lot from my store.  I suppose maybe the soda and candy trade will fall off a little if I get married, but if it does I can take a young clerk to draw it.  You won’t have to work so hard.  You can let some of this big hotel, and keep rooms enough for us, and I’ll hire a girl for the kitchen and you can do fancy-work.”

“Land!” said Lucinda.  “I can do the work for only two.”

“You’re going to have a hired girl,” said Albion, firmly.  “I know of one I can get.  She’s a real good cook.  Are you going in the hack with me, Lucinda?”

Lucinda looked up at him, and her face was as the face of a young girl.  She had never had an offer, nor a lover.  Albion Bennet looked very dear to her.

“Good land!” said Albion, “you act as if you were a back number, Lucinda.  You look as young as lots of the young women.  You don’t do up your hair quite like the girls that come for soda and candy, but otherwise—­”

“I can do up my hair like them, if I want to,” said Lucinda.  “It’s thick enough.  I suppose I ’ain’t fussed because I didn’t realize that anybody but myself ever thought about it one way or the other.”

“Then you’ll go in the hack?” said Albion.

Lucinda made a sudden, sharp wheel about.  “I sha’n’t get ready to go in a hack if I don’t hurry and get these biscuits made for supper,” said she, and was gone.

It is odd how individuality will uprear itself before its own consciousness, in the most adverse circumstances.  Few in all the company invited to the wedding wasted a thought upon Albion Bennet and Lucinda Hart, but both felt as if they were the principal figures of it all.  Lucinda really did merit attention.  She had taken another role upon her stage of life.  The change in her appearance savored of magic.  Albion kept looking at her as if he doubted his very eyes.  Lucinda did not wear the black silk which