“Not that I’m afraid of him or any other man, only I’d like to be looking decent on the girl’s account,” she said, as she glanced about her always tidy, well-kept house, to see what there was lacking. “The winders were awful nasty,” she concluded, and she went at them at once with soap and sand, and rubbed them till they shone, and scoured her cellar stairs, and put fresh linen on the bed in the front chamber, in case he should stay all night, and carried water up there and a bit of Castile soap, and put a prayer-book on the stand at the head of his bed, and wondered if he was high or low, and whether he would expect to ask a blessing at the table. “I shall ask him to, any way,” she said, and then she made a fresh cask of root beer, which she always kept in summer, and baked a huge pound cake, and made some balls of Dutch cheese, and wore her second-best calico every morning, and her best gingham every afternoon, in expectance of her guest, who did not appear for more than two weeks, and who took her at the last wholly unawares, as is so frequently the case. She had given up his coming, and was making a barrel of soap in the lane, but so close to her front yard as to be plainly visible to any one who should stop at her gate. She did not wear her second-best calico that morning, but was arrayed in her cleaning-house costume, a quilted petticoat, patched with divers colors and kinds of calico, delaine, and silk, blue, green, and black, with here and there a bit of scarlet, the whole forming a most wonderful garment, which would at first sight remind one of Joseph’s coat. She never wore hoops in the morning, and her short, patchwork quilt, hung loose and limp about her feet, which were encased in what she called her “slips,” a pair of low, cloth shoes, she had herself manufactured. A loose calico sacque, or short gown, surmounted her petticoat, and with the exception of the shaker on her head, with its faded brown cape, made from an old barege veil, completed her costume. She was equipped for her work, with no thought of Roy Leighton in her mind, and the fire was blazing brightly under her big iron kettle, and the soap was boiling merrily, and with her sleeves above her elbows, she stood, saucer in hand, stirring and cooling some of the glutinous mass, and had about concluded that it needed a little more lye, when the sound of wheels was heard, and a covered buggy and a gay, high-mettled horse came dashing round the corner of the church, and stopped before her gate, where a fine, stylish-looking man alighted, and seemed to be looking curiously about him, and possibly speculating as to whether he really had seen the whisk of a gay-colored skirt disappearing round the house or not.