The finishing stroke was given to the handsome suite of rooms intended for the bride, which Geraldine pronounced perfect, while even Lilian went into ecstasies over them. Her taste had been consulted in everything, and a stranger would have easily mistaken her for the future occupant, so careful was Geraldine that she should be suited. And now nothing was wanting to complete the furnishing except Mildred’s beautiful piano, which was to come when she did, and with a self-satisfied expression upon her face, Geraldine locked the door, and giving the key to Lawrence said something pleasant to him of the day when Mrs. Lawrence Thornton would first cross the threshold of her future home. Two dressmakers, one with her scissors fastened to her belt with a steel chain, and the other with a silken cord, were hired at an enormous expense and sent to Beechwood, whither the Lady Geraldine followed them to superintend in person the making of the dresses and the arrangements for the wedding. With an unsparing hand the Judge opened his purse, bidding Mildred take all she wanted, and authorizing Geraldine to buy whatever a bride like her was supposed to need. In the village everybody was more or less engaged in talking of the party,—wondering who would be invited and what they would wear. Mothers went to Springfield in quest of suitable garments for the daughters, who sneered at the dry-goods to be found at home. Husbands were bidden to be measured for new coats. White kids rose in value, and the Mayfield merchants felt their business steadily increasing as the preparations progressed. Even Mildred became an object of uncommon interest, and those who had seen her all her life, now ran to the window if by chance she appeared in the street, a thing she finally ceased to do, inasmuch as Geraldine told her it wasn’t quite genteel. So Mildred stayed at home, where chairs and tables, piano and beds, literally groaned with finery, and where a dozen times a day the two dressmakers from Boston gave her _fits_, with Geraldine standing by and suggesting another whalebone here and a little more cotton there, while Miss Steel-chain declared that “Miss Howell’s was a perfect form and didn’t need such things at all.” “She’s as free from deformity as most people, I’ll admit,” Geraldine would say, “but one shoulder is a trifle higher than the other, while she had a bad school-girl habit of standing on one foot, which naturally makes her waist wrinkle on one side.” So Mildred was tortured after the most approved fashion, wondering if they supposed she was never to have a single thing after she was married, and so were making up a most unheard-of quantity of clothes to be hung away in the closet until they were entirely out of date.