"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