“It will seem more Christian-like and pleasant to have somebody sit opposite you at table on such a day as this, won’t it, Tabby?” Miss Pepper said to her cat, to whom she was sometimes given to talking, and who showed her appreciation of the remark by a friendly mew and by rubbing against her mistress’ dress. And then Miss Pepper’s thoughts went straying back into the past, forty years ago, and she saw a group of noisy, happy children, of which she had been the merriest, the ringleader, they had called her at first, and afterward the flirt, who cared but little how many hearts she broke when, at the gay Thanksgiving time, she joined them at her grandfather’s house among the Vermont hills, and with her glowing beauty, set off by some bright bit of ribbon or string of beads, made sad havoc with the affections of her young male relatives. There was a slight jerking of her shoulders, and a bridling of her head, as Miss Pepper remembered those far-off days, and then her thoughts came a little nearer to the present time, to thirty-five years ago that Thanksgiving day, and the dress of white brocade, with its bertha of dainty lace, and the orange flowers sent by a city cousin who “could not be present on the happy occasion.” The flowers were never worn, neither was the lace, nor the brocade; and yellow and soiled with time, they lay together, far down in the old red chest, where the linen sheets and the sprigs of lavender were, and where no one had ever seen them but Miss Pepper herself. As regularly as Thanksgiving day came round, she opened the red chest, and undoing the precious parcel, shook out the heavy folds of the brocade, and held the orange flowers a moment in her hands, and wondered where _he_ was to-day, and if he thought of thirty-five years ago, and what had almost been. As she had always done so, Miss Pepper did now on the day of which we write; and did it, too, earlier than had been her wont. Usually her visit to the chest was reserved for the afternoon, but this morning there was a strange yearning at her heart, a longing for something her life had missed, and before her breakfast dishes were washed she had made her yearly visit to the chest, and sitting down beside it, as by an open grave, with the faded brocade across her lap, and the orange flowers in her hand, said softly to herself, “If this had come to pass I mightn’t have been alone to-day.” And then, as she remembered the girl of thirty-five years ago, and thought of herself as she was now, she arose, and going to the glass, inspected, with a grim kind of resignation, the face which met her view; the thin, sharp features, the straight nose, with its slightly glaring nostrils, the firmly compressed lips, the broad, low forehead, and the round black eyes which age had not dimmed one whit, though it had given them a sharper, harder expression than in their youth they had worn.