Alice looked down at her dark green stuff gown, hanging quite dead and unbrightened even in that fervid sunshine, and shook her head with a smile of odd distress. "It is much too fine for me, I was never meant to be a lady," said Alice, "but I'd wear white like a girl, sooner than cross you, my darling; and that is for me--bless your dear heart! that is a ribbon fit for a queen!" "But the queen is not to be here," said I, "so you must wear it, Alice; and I do not want you to be without your apron. I like that great white apron. I wonder if I will like to lay down my head upon it, Alice, when I am old?" "When you are old, Alice will not be here, Miss Hester," she said, with a smile; "you are like other young things, you think you will not be a young lady when you are married; but my darling, married or not married, the years take their full time to come." "Ah, I will never be a girl again," said I, sighing with one of the half mock, half real sentimentalities of youth. "Alice, do you think, after all, my father is pleased?" "I think," she began, but she stopped and paused, and evidently took a second thought; "yes, Miss Hester, I think he is pleased," she said, "he has every reason--yes, dear, don't fear for your papa; it is all good--all better than anybody could have planned it--I know it is." "Do you know that you speak very oddly sometimes, Alice," said I; "you speak as if you were a prophet, and knew something about us, that we did not ourselves know." "Don't you think such things, Miss Hester," said Alice, hurriedly, and her face reddened, "as I am no gipsy nor fortune-teller either, not a bit." "Are you angry?" said I, "angry at me, Alice?" I was a little surprised, and it was quite true that two or three times I had been at a loss to know what she meant. "Angry at _you_--no, darling, nor never was all your life," said Alice, "for all you have your own proud temper, Miss Hester--for I never was one to flatter. Will I send the box away? look, dear, if you have got all."