Many things had been achieved before this, however, as may have been expected, from the great preparations which had been going on ever since Pringle's proposal, _ex parte_ the campaigner, and the settlement of the engagement. The parsonage had been newly decorated and painted throughout from top to basement; on the campaigner's express stipulation, the drawing-room had been refurnished in a gorgeous suite of velvet and gold; and, although Lizzie's special domain in the garden had not been interfered with, everything else about the young incumbent's mansion had been altered and duly prepared for the coming event. At Laburnum Cottage, too, the occasion was not disregarded. To do her the justice, the campaigner was not stingy in her present expenditure. Whether it was the joy of marrying off one of her marriageable daughters opened her purse-strings in the same extent as it gladdened her heart, or that it arose from a desire to shine amidst the thing, or that it was owing to a union of both sentiments, cannot be exactly decided: suffice it to say that the campaigner opened her purse with a lavish hand. For many days large boxes had come down from various haberdashers--"dry goods establishments," the Americans call them--and milliners in London; and every little shop in Bigton had been ransacked to the same intent by Lady Inskip and her daughters. The languid Laura was provided with such a gigantic _trousseau_ that she would probably attain the rank of grandmother before she wore out one half the number of "dozens" provided, while a perfect corps of needlewomen was kept in constant employment, basting, fitting, hemming, stitching, cutting out, felling, "goring," and trying on, for upwards of a fortnight or more. The campaigner had an additional motive in thus providing for her eldest darling. You see, Lady Inskip had no _dot_, as she elegantly phrased it, with which to endow her "poor, portionless darlings," and the fact of giving them a handsome "rig-out," as their brother Mortimer said, would perhaps blind the eyes of Caelebs in search of a wife. Be that as it may, however, the needlewomen worked apace, the _trousseau_ was fully provided, and Monday night, the eve of the wedding day, Tuesday, the seventh of January, anno domini 1868, found everything ready for the auspicious event.