“It seems odd, when Lovice wa’n’t a perfessor herself, she should have drawed the most pious young men in the village, but she did; she had good Orthodox beaux, Free and Close Baptists, Millerites and Adventists, all on her string together; she even had one Cochranite, though the sect had mostly died out. But when Reuben Granger come home, a full-feathered-out minister, he seemed to strike her fancy as he never had before, though they were always good friends from children. He had light hair and blue eyes and fair skin (his business being under cover kep’ him bleached out), and he and Lovey made the prettiest couple you ever see; for she was dark complexioned, and her cheeks no otherways than scarlit the whole durin’ time. She had a change of heart that winter; in fact, she had two of ’em, for she changed hers for Reuben’s, and found a hope at the same time. ’Twas a good, honest conversion, too, though she did say to me she was afraid that if Reuben hadn’t taught her what love was or might be, she’d never have found out enough about it to love God as she’d ought to. “There, I’ve begun both roses, and hers is ’bout finished. I sha’n’t have more’n enough white alapaca. It’s lucky the moths spared one breadth of the wedding dresses; we was married on the same day, you know, and dressed just alike. Jot wa’n’t quite ready to be married, for he wa’n’t any more forehanded ’bout that than he was ’bout other things; but I told him Lovey and I had kept up with each other from the start, and he’d got to fall into line or drop out of the percession. Now what next?” “Wasn’t there anybody at the wedding but you and Lovice?” asked Priscilla, with an amused smile. “Land, yes! The meeting-house was cram jam full. Oh, to be sure! I know what you’re driving at! Well, I have to laugh to think I should have forgot the husbands! They’ll have to be worked into the story, certain; but it’ll be consid’able of a chore, for I can’t make flowers out of coat and pants stuff, and there ain’t any more flowers on this branch, anyway.” Diadema sat for a few minutes in rapt thought, and then made a sudden inspired dash upstairs, where Miss Hollis presently heard her rummaging in an old chest. She soon came down, triumphant. “Wa’n’t it a providence I saved Jot’s and Reuben’s wedding ties! And here they are—one yellow and green mixed, and one brown. Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to draw in a butterfly hovering over them two roses, and make it out of the neckties—green with brown spots. That’ll bring in the husbands; and land! I wouldn’t have either of ’em know it for the world. I’ll take a pattern of that lunar moth you pinned on the curtain yesterday.” Miss Hollis smiled in spite of herself. “You have some very ingenious ideas and some very pretty thoughts, Mrs. Bascom, do you know it?”