“Only that little, teenty thing? How funny. Why, mamma carried three most as big as my bed to Saratoga. You can’t have many dresses. What are you going to wear to dinner?” “I’ve been to dinner.” And Maddy looked up in some surprise. “You have! We never have it till five, when Guy is at home; but now they are gone, Mrs. Noah says we will have it at one, as folks ought to do. To-day I coaxed her to wait till you come, and the table is all set out so nicely for two. Can you carve, and do you like green turtle soup?” Maddy was bewildered, but managed to reply that she could not carve, that she never saw any green turtle soup, and that she supposed she should wear to dinner the delaine she had on. “Why, we always change, even Mrs. Noah,” Jessie exclaimed, bending over the open trunk and examining its contents. Two calicoes, a blue muslin, a gingham and another delaine, beside the one she had on. That was the sum total of Maddy’s wardrobe, and Jessie glanced at it a little ruefully as Maddy carefully shook out the nicely folded dresses and laid them upon the bed. Here Mrs. Noah was heard calling Jessie, who ran away leaving Maddy alone for a moment. Maddy had seen the look Jessie gave her dresses, and for the first time there dawned upon her mind the possibility that her plain apparel, and ignorance of the ways of Aikenside might be to her the cause of much mortification. “And grandma said they were so nice, too—doing them up so carefully,” she said, her lip beginning to quiver, and her eyes filling with tears, as thoughts of home came rushing over her. She could not force them back, and laying her head upon the top of the despised hair trunk, she sobbed aloud. Guy Remington’s private room was in that hall, and as the doctor knew a book was to have been left there for him, he took the liberty of getting it; passing Maddy’s door he heard the low sound of weeping, and looking in, saw her where she sat or rather knelt upon the floor. “Homesick so soon!” he said, advancing to her side, and then amid a torrent of tears, the whole came out. Maddy never could do as they did there, and everybody would laugh at her so for an awkward thing; she never knew that folks ate dinner at five instead of twelve—she should surely starve to death—she couldn’t carve—she could not eat mud-turtle soup, and she did not know which dress to wear for dinner—would the doctor tell her? There they were, and she pointed to the bed, only five, and she knew Jessie thought it so mean. Such was the substance of Maddy’s passionate outpouring of her griefs to the highly perplexed doctor, who, after quieting her somewhat, ascertained that the greatest present trouble was the deciding what dress was suitable to the occasion. The doctor had never made dress his study, but as it happened he liked blue, and so suggested it, as the one most likely to be becoming.