"Very well, my love." Mrs. Hunt went on polishing a tumbler with her napkin. She always washed her silver and glass herself. "You must settle that with your father and Mr. Hammond. They are crazy for this plan. They were talking to me about it last night, and I told them that I would engage to have everything ready in time; but you must be consulted. I never saw your father more set upon anything. He said to me, private, that he did hope that you wouldn't raise any squeamish objections, and upset their arrangements." Mrs. Hunt took up a handful of spoons as composedly as if she had never stretched her conscience in her life. Sarah's head drooped upon the table. She was very, very miserable. In her morbid state of mind she did not dream of questioning the accuracy of her mother's assertion. That a marriageable single daughter was a burden to one parent, she knew but too well; that to this able financier the prospect of getting two out of the way, with the eclat of a double ceremony that should cost no more than Lucy's nuptials would have done, was a stupendous temptation, she also perceived. But that the father whom she so loved; whose sickbed she had tended so faithfully; whose lonely hours it was her province and delight to solace--that he should acquiesce--nay more, rejoice in this indelicate haste to get rid of her, was a cruel stab. "Very well," she said, raising an ashy face. "Let it be as you say. The sooner it is over, the better." This clause was unheeded by her mother and sister. Had they heard it, they might have understood it as little as they did the composure with which she joined in the work which was begun, without an hour's delay. In this trying juncture, Mrs. Hunt came out in all her strength. Her sewing machine (she was one of the earliest purchasers of these inestimable time, labor, and money savers) went night and day; she shopped largely and judiciously, giving orders to tradespeople with the air of a princess; "Jewed" her butcher; watched her pantry, and served up poorer dinners than ever. Jeannie's winter outfit was ingeniously contrived from her sister's cast-off wardrobe; Mr. Hunt's and the boys' shirts and socks were patched and darned until but a trifling quantity of the original material remained; and this pearl of mothers had her two-year-old cloak and last season's hat "done over" for this year's wear.