"Tuesday," repeated Katie, "if the weather be suitable for his daughter.
Look at this letter and you'll see; his world hinges on his daughter's
comfort, he is father and mother both to her. Elizabeth needs it, too;
she can't take care of herself well. Perhaps she could wake up and do it
for somebody else. But I am not sure. She's a dear child, though she
seems to me younger than I am. Isn't it funny, mother, for she knows a
good deal more, and she's very bright sometimes? But she never makes the
best of anything, especially of herself."

It was the day before the wedding. The great old house was full of
bustle from its gambrel roof to its very cellar in which wines were
decanted to be in readiness, and into which pastries and sweetmeats were
carried from the pantry shelves overloaded with preparations for the
next day's festivities. Servants ran hither and thither, full of
excitement and pleasant anticipations. They all loved Katie who had
grown up among them. And, besides, the morrow's pleasures were not to be
enjoyed by them wholly by proxy, for if there was to be only wedding
enough for one pair, at least the remains of the feast would go round
handsomely. Two or three black faces were seen among the English ones,
but though they were owned by Mr. Archdale, the disgrace and the badge
of servitude had fallen upon them lightly, and the shining of merry eyes
and the gleam of white teeth relieved a darkness that nature, and not
despair, had made. In New England, masters were always finding reasons
why their slaves should be manumitted. How could slavery flourish in a
land where the wind of freedom was so strong that it could blow a whole
cargo of tea into the ocean?

But there were not only servants going back and forth through the
house, for it was full of guests. The Colonel's family living so near,