“We should want fine clothes and jewelry, too, and to go to the theatres every night, and money to buy chocolates every day. Oh, I shall be so happy! And what if we could afford to go to Niagara Falls, the dream of my life!” she clapped her hands in delight, while Miss Ruttencutter chimed in: “The dream of my life is to have a brown silk frock, with jet trimmin’s onto it; an’ a brown velvet bonnet, all covered in green feathers; an’ a seal plush cape to go with ’em. An’ if I had a ch’ice to go anywheres on the kyars, I’d ruther go to Charleston an’ see the gov’ner an’ the legislatour, an’ all the big men o’ our State.” “A fig for the big men, unless I could marry one, and I don’t know as I care so much about that! I’ve heard tell that all these celebrated men have to get old before they get famous, and I don’t want any old man, thank you, but a handsome young one!” cried Patty. “If I could go to any grand place, ’twould be New York, where all the poor girls have romantic adventures and marry grand swells!” “Pooh, that’s only in novels, Pat!” laughed Lydia. “I’d take my chances on its being true!” Patty retorted confidently, with a glance at her glowing brunette charms in the little cracked mirror. Thus they beguiled the long, snowy days of the dreary winter with hopeful anticipations, but with Gran’ther Groves it was quite different. To the two girls life was in its hopeful spring, but his in the sere and yellow leaf. And the tragedy of Hallowe’en had added years to his age in a night. The breakdown of that night had left him nervous and ill; too ill to go to the grave with Terry, when two days later they bore him solemnly to his long repose in the family burial ground on top of the hill, from whence the granite headstones of the family could be seen far in the distance shining in the sun. Gran’ther could only sit by the window with a neighbor for company and watch the solemn funeral train driving away with the hoped-for prop of his old age hidden away under the black pall, and his heart sank with grief and despair, for his two best beloved grandchildren, Terry and Eva, were now gone from him forever--Terry to the lonesome grave; Eva, as he doubted not, to her rich father in New York, where she would have all the luxuries of life, except the love of her old grandfather, he thought, arguing to himself that no one else could ever love her as well as he had done before her sin turned his love to hate. All the neighborhood, as well as himself, believed that Eva was indeed in New York. There were three exceptions--the ones who had secretly appropriated the money given to Eva for her trip; but they kept their own counsel.