readiness for the bride, who would do her own cooking. Who but Stephen would
have made the very wood ready for a woman's home-coming; and why had he done
so much in May, when they were not to be married until August? Then the door
of the bedroom was stealthily opened, and here Rose sat down and cried for joy
and shame and hope and fear. The very flowered paper she had refused as too
expensive! How lovely it looked with the white chamber set! She brought in her
simple wedding outfit of blankets, bed-linen, and counterpanes, and folded
them softly in the closet; and then for the rest of the morning she went from
room to room, doing all that could remain undiscovered, even to laying a fire
in the new kitchen stove.

This was the plan. Stephen must pass the house on his way from the River Farm
to the bridge, where he was to join the river-drivers on Monday morning. She
would be out of bed by the earliest peep of dawn, put on Stephen's favorite
pink calico, leave a note for her grandmother, run like a hare down her side
of the river and up Stephen's, steal into the house, open blinds and windows,
light the fire, and set the kettle boiling. Then with a sharp knife she would
cut down two rows of corn, and thus make a green pathway from the front
kitchen steps to the road. Next, the false and insulting "To Let" sign would
be forcibly tweaked from the tree and thrown into the grass. She would then
lay the table in the kitchen, and make ready the nicest breakfast that two
people ever sat down to. And oh, would two people sit down to it; or would one
go off in a rage and the other die of grief and disappointment?

Then, having done all, she would wait and palpitate, and palpitate and wait,
until Stephen came. Surely no property-owner in the universe could drive along
a road, observe his corn leveled to the earth, his sign removed, his house
open, and smoke issuing from his chimney, without going in to surprise the
rogue and villain who could be guilty of such vandalism.