“I didn’t know what time it was,” said Lettice, as she ran upstairs. Aunt Martha’s state dinners were rather dreary affairs. Solemn dinings to which dignified heads of families were invited. In this instance it was in honor of an elderly bride that the invitations were sent out. One of Mr. Hopkins’s cousins had taken to himself a second wife, and Lettice did not anticipate any great joviality; yet her hopes were high, for she had gained a great point, she considered. Robert would be true to his promise, she knew he would; and if the war would but end, then he would make his request of her father in proper form, and her father would not refuse. She was entirely unworldly in her thought of it all, and hardly gave a passing consideration to the fact that her lover was a wealthy man, and considered an excellent match; all that troubled her was his politics. She stopped so often, and was so preoccupied in the making of her toilet, that Lutie finally exclaimed:-- “Yuh sholy mus’ be in lub, Miss Letty. Yuh ain’t gwine put on bofe dem scarfs, is yuh?” Then Lettice laughed and told Lutie she was a saucy minx, that if she didn’t behave she should be sent out with the field hands. And Lutie, who knew just what that threat amounted to, having frequently heard it before, giggled and further remarked that: “Mars Clinton a mighty fine gemman,” and when Miss Letty went to New York to live, Lutie hoped she wasn’t “gwine be lef’ behin’,” for which speech she received a rap of Lettice’s knuckles, and then mistress and maid descended the stairs, the latter as proud of her young lady, in her best summer attire, as the young lady was of herself. It may have been that Lettice was not willing to risk sitting by Betty’s side under the ardent gaze of her lover on the opposite seat of the carriage, and with Betty to watch every glance of his eye, for at the last moment she declared that she wanted Jamie to drive her over, and would wait for him, and wouldn’t the others please go on without her. “You are a contrary little piece,” said Betty, out of patience. “Here you have kept us waiting all this time, and now you won’t go with us. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” “I didn’t think of it,” returned Lettice, calmly. “You flustered me so by telling me it was late, that I forgot about Jamie.” And seeing she was bound to have her own way, Betty and Mr. Clinton drove off without her. The company had all assembled when the last guests from Hopkins’s Point reached Sylvia’s Ramble, and Lettice wished she had come earlier when she saw that Mr. Clinton was at the gate to meet her, and that with him in attendance she would be obliged to pass under the scrutiny of a dozen mature cousins, each of whom felt it a prerogative to make as many personal remarks as he or she desired; so that the girl was glad to escape with Rhoda, who, though critical, was not so aggressively candid as one’s relatives are likely to be.