“Oh, yes, well, of course, that’s a different thing,” Godfrey replied. “I did tell you to _think of it_, I know, and you evidently have thought of it, and had a good time at it, but I never said it was so. I told you ‘she would take your breath away when you saw her,’ and she did. You all three opened your eyes and mouths and stared at her as if you never saw a handsome woman before. And she is handsome, isn’t she? Now, confess it, girls; and say she is the loveliest creature you ever saw——” “Oh, Godfrey, I do believe you are half in love with her yourself,” Alice said, a little reproachfully, and the young man replied: “To be sure I am; and if she had been younger there’s no telling what I might have done, but when I subtracted eighteen from twenty-eight, I said to myself, ‘that will never do; a man may not marry his grandmother;’ and then, Alice, I knew there was a little pug nose over the sea, which would get very red and ugly looking if I did that,” he added, mischievously, as he saw the disturbed look on Alice’s face, and knew why it was there. “Is she twenty-eight? She does not look it,” Emma said, while Julia and Alice declared she did; and then as women, especially envious ones, will do, they picked her to pieces, from her head to her feet, and putting her together again, decided that though they had seen much finer faces and prettier, too, her _tout ensemble_ was very good, and they were so much relieved, as they had expected something horrid, of which even the villagers would make fun. “Wait till you see her in her dinner dress,” Godfrey said. “I tell you her gowns are elegant, Paris made, too. I’ve seen them. I know. I’ve travelled.” (This with a wink at Alice.) “And that reminds me, Jule and Em, why are you rigged out in black, this warm, pleasant day? You look as if you were in mourning. I believe you did it on purpose too, but I tell you she is stunning in her dinner costumes, and if you don’t wish to be thrown quite in the shade, I’d take off those black things, and put on something fluffy and light and airy and becoming; and you, auntie, certainly do not mean to stay mewed up here on toast and oatmeal, while we are at dinner. Take a big drink from every bottle in the closet, and if that don’t do, try some of your lightning. I’ll fix the battery; and then dress yourself and go down, and look handsome and bright. Why, I think you’ve grown pretty and young while I was gone, and I want that beauty to see that all the good looks are not on her side. The Schuylers have some of it. Come, girls, hurry up.” They could not withstand Godfrey, especially when he mingled a little seasonable flattery with his persuasions, and both Julia and Emma went to their rooms to change their dress, while Miss Rossiter expressed her willingness to go down if she could be ready in time.