“Wh-what?” Jethro demanded.

“Well,” said Cynthia, demurely gazing down at her ankles, “shoes and stockings.”  The barefooted days had long gone by.

Jethro laughed.  Perhaps some inkling of her reasons came to him, for he had a strange and intuitive understanding of her.  At any rate, he accepted her decision with a meekness which would have astonished many people who knew only that side of him which he showed to the world.  Gently she released her hand, and folded up the bundle again and gave it to him.

“B-better keep it—­hadn’t you?”

“No, you keep it.  And I will wear it for you when I am rich, Uncle Jethro.”

Jethro did keep it, and in due time the cardinal cloth had its uses.  But Cynthia did not wear it on the Fourth of July.

That was a great day for Brampton, being not only the nation’s birthday, but the hundredth year since the adventurous little band of settlers from Connecticut had first gazed upon Coniston Water at that place.  Early in the morning wagon loads began to pour into Brampton Street from Harwich, from Coniston, from Tarleton Four Corners, and even from distant Clovelly, and Brampton was banner-hung for the occasion—­flags across the stores, across the dwellings, and draped along the whole breadth of the meeting-house; but for sheer splendor the newly built mansion of Isaac D. Worthington outshone them all.  Although its owner was a professed believer in republican simplicity, no such edifice ornamented any town to the west of the state capital.  Small wonder that the way in front of it was blocked by a crowd lost in admiration of its Gothic proportions!  It stands to-day one of many monuments to its builder, with its windows of one pane (unheard-of magnificence), its tower of stone, its porch with pointed arches and scroll-work.  No fence divides its grounds from the public walk, and on the smooth-shaven lawn between the ornamental flower beds and the walk stand two stern mastiffs of iron, emblematic of the solidity and power of their owner.  It was as much to see this house as to hear the oratory that the countryside flocked to Brampton that day.

All the day before Cynthia and Milly, and many another housewife, had been making wonderful things for the dinners they were to bring, and stowing them in the great basket ready for the early morning start.  At six o’clock Jethro’s three-seated farm wagon was in front of the store.  Cousin Ephraim Prescott, in a blue suit and an army felt hat with a cord, got up behind, a little stiffly by reason of that Wilderness bullet; and there were also William Wetherell and Lem Hallowell, his honest face shining, and Sue, his wife, and young Sue and Jock and Lilian, all a-quiver with excitement in their Sunday best.

And as they drove away there trotted up behind them Moses and Amandy Hatch, with their farm team, and all the little Hatches,—­Eben and George and Judy and Liza.  As they jogged along they drank in the fragrance of the dew-washed meadows and the pines, and a great blue heron stood knee-deep on the far side of Deacon Lysander’s old mill-pond, watching them philosophically as they passed.