“I’m one that always dreads seeing some o’ the folks that I don’t like, at such a time as this,” announced Mrs. Todd privately to me after a season of reflection. We were just waiting for the feast to begin. “You wouldn’t think such a great creatur’ ’s I be could feel all over pins an’ needles. I remember, the day I promised to Nathan, how it come over me, just’s I was feelin’ happy ’s I could, that I’d got to have an own cousin o’ his for my near relation all the rest o’ my life, an’ it seemed as if die I should. Poor Nathan saw somethin’ had crossed me,—he had very nice feelings,—and when he asked me what ’twas, I told him. ‘I never could like her myself,’ said he. ‘You sha’n’t be bothered, dear,’ he says; an’ ’twas one o’ the things that made me set a good deal by Nathan, he didn’t make a habit of always opposin’, like some men. ‘Yes,’ says I, ‘but think o’ Thanksgivin’ times an’ funerals; she’s our relation, an’ we’ve got to own her.’ Young folks don’t think o’ those things. There she goes now, do let’s pray her by!” said Mrs. Todd, with an alarming transition from general opinions to particular animosities. “I hate her just the same as I always did; but she’s got on a real pretty dress. I do try to remember that she’s Nathan’s cousin. Oh dear, well; she’s gone by after all, an’ ain’t seen me. I expected she’d come pleasantin’ round just to show off an’ say afterwards she was acquainted.” This was so different from Mrs. Todd’s usual largeness of mind that I had a moment’s uneasiness; but the cloud passed quickly over her spirit, and was gone with the offender. There never was a more generous out-of-door feast along the coast than the Bowden family set forth that day. To call it a picnic would make it seem trivial. The great tables were edged with pretty oak-leaf trimming, which the boys and girls made. We brought flowers from the fence-thickets of the great field; and out of the disorder of flowers and provisions suddenly appeared as orderly a scheme for the feast as the marshal had shaped for the procession. I began to respect the Bowdens for their inheritance of good taste and skill and a certain pleasing gift of formality. Something made them do all these things in a finer way than most country people would have done them. As I looked up and down the tables there was a good cheer, a grave soberness that shone with pleasure, a humble dignity of bearing. There were some who should have sat below the salt for lack of this good breeding; but they were not many. So, I said to myself, their ancestors may have sat in the great hall of some old French house in the Middle Ages, when battles and sieges and processions and feasts were familiar things. The ministers and Mrs. Blackett, with a few of their rank and age, were put in places of honor, and for once that I looked any other way I looked twice at Mrs. Blackett’s face, serene and mindful of privilege and responsibility, the mistress by simple fitness of this great day.