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“My soul, Lucindy!” cried Mrs. Wilson, startled into a more robust frankness than usual, “you do look like the Old Nick!”

A shade came over Miss Lucindy’s honest face. It seemed, for a moment, as if she were going to cry.

“Don’t you like ’em, Jane?” she asked, appealingly. “Won’t neither of ’em do?”

Mrs. Wilson was not incapable of compunction, but she felt also the demands of the family honor.

“Well, Lucindy,” she began, soothingly, “now ’tain’t any use, is it, for us to say we ain’t gettin’ on in years? We be! You ‘re my age, an’–Why, look at Claribel in there! What should you say, if you see me settin’ out to meetin’ with red flowers on my bunnit? I should be nothin’ but a laughin’-stock!”

Lucindy laid the flowers back in their box, with as much tenderness as if they held the living fragrance of a dream.

“Well!” she said, wistfully. Then she tried to smile.

“Here!” interposed Mrs. Wilson, not over-pleased with the part she felt called upon to play, “you give me your bunnit. Don’t I see your old sheaf o’wheat in the box? Let me pin it on for you. There, now, don’t that look more suitable?”

By the time she had laid it on, in conventional flatness, and held it up for inspection, every trace of rebellion had apparently been banished from Lucindy’s mind.

“Here,” said the victim of social rigor, “you hand me the box, and I’ll set it away.”

They had a cosey, old-fashioned chat, touching upon nothing in the least revolutionary, and Mrs. Wilson was glad to think Lucindy had forgotten all about the side-saddle. This last incident of the bonnet, she reflected, showed how much real influence she had over Lucindy. She must take care to exert it kindly but seriously now that the old Judge was gone.

“You goin’ to keep your same help?” she asked, continuing the conversation.

“Oh, yes! I wouldn’t part with Ann Toby for a good deal. She’s goin’ to have her younger sister come to live with us now. We shall be a passel o’ women, sha’n’t we?”

“I guess it’s well for you Ann Toby’s what she is, or she’d cheat you out o’ your eye-teeth!”

“Well,” answered Lucindy, easily, “I ain’t goin’ to worry about my eye-teeth. If I be cheated out of ’em, I guess I can get a new set.”

At five o’clock, they had some cookies, ostensibly for Claribel, since Mrs. Wilson could not stay to tea; and then, when the little maid had taken hers out to the front steps, Lucindy broached a daring plan, that moment conceived.

“Say, Jane,” she whispered, with great pretence of secrecy, “what do you think just come into my head? Do you s’pose Mattie would be put out, if I should give Claribel a hat?”

“Mercy sakes, no! all in the family so! But what set you out on that? She’s got a good last year’s one now, an’ the ribbin’s all pressed out an’ turned, complete.”

“I’ll tell you,” Said Lucindy, leaning nearer, and speaking as if she feared the very corners might hear. “You know I never was allowed to wear bright colors. And to this day, I see the hats the other girls had, blue on ’em, and pink. And if I could stand by and let a little girl pick out a hat for herself, without a word said to stop her, ‘twould be real agreeable to me.” Lucindy was shrewd enough to express herself somewhat moderately. She knew by experience how plainly Jane considered it a duty to discourage any overmastering emotion. But Jane Wilson was, at the same instant, feeling very keenly that Lucindy, faded and old as she was, needed to be indulged in all her riotous fancies. She repressed the temptation, however, at its birth.

“Why, I dunno’s there’s anything in the way of it,” she said, soberly.

“Then, if you must go, I’ll walk right along now. Claribel and I’ll go down to Miss West’s, and see what she’s got. Nothin”s to be gained by waitin’!”