CHAPTER II

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      As a natural consequence of her hard work and her midnight awakening, Marcia overslept the next morning. Her stepmother called her sharply and she dressed in haste, not even taking time to glance toward the new folds of chintz that drew her thoughts closetward. She dared not say anything about it yet. There was much to be done, and not even Kate had time for an idle word with her. Marcia was called upon to run errands, to do odds and ends of things, to fill in vacant places, to sew on lost buttons, to do everything for which nobody else had time. The household had suddenly become aware that there was now but one more intervening day between them and the wedding.

      It was not until late in the afternoon that Marcia ventured to put on her frock. Even then she felt shy about appearing in it.

      Madam Schuyler was busy in the parlor with callers, and Kate was locked in her own room whither she had gone to rest. There was no one to notice if Marcia should “dress up,” and it was not unlikely that she might escape much notice even at the supper table, as everybody was so absorbed in other things.

      She lingered before her own little glass looking wistfully at herself. She was pleased with the frock she had made and liked her appearance in it, but yet there was something disappointing about it. It had none of the style of her sister’s garments, newly come from the hand of the village mantua-maker. It was girlish, and showed her slip of a form prettily in the fashion of the day, but she felt too young. She wanted to look older. She searched her drawer and found a bit of black velvet which she pinned about her throat with a pin containing the miniature of her mother, then with a second thought she drew the long braids up in loops and fastened them about her head in older fashion. It suited her well, and the change it made astonished her. She decided to wear them so and see if others would notice. Surely, some day she would be a young woman, and perhaps then she would be allowed to have a will of her own occasionally.

      She drew a quick breath as she descended the stairs and found her stepmother and the visitor just coming into the hall from the parlor.

      They both involuntarily ceased their talk and looked at her in surprise. Over Madam Schuyler’s face there came a look as if she had received a revelation. Marcia was no longer a child, but had suddenly blossomed into young womanhood. It was not the time she would have chosen for such an event. There was enough going on, and Marcia was still in school. She had no desire to steer another young soul through the various dangers and follies that beset a pretty girl from the time she puts up her hair until she is safely married to the right man—or the wrong one. She had just begun to look forward with relief to having Kate well settled in life. Kate had been a hard one to manage. She had too much will of her own and a pretty way of always having it. She had no deep sense of reverence for old, staid manners and customs. Many a long lecture had Madam Schuyler delivered to Kate upon her unseemly ways. It did not please her to think of having to go through it all so soon again, therefore upon her usually complacent brow there came a look of dismay.

      “Why!” exclaimed the visitor, “is this the bride? How tall she looks! No! Bless me! it isn’t, is it? Yes,—Well! I’ll declare. It’s just Marsh! What have you got on, child? How old you look!”

      Marcia flushed. It was not pleasant to have her young womanhood questioned, and in a tone so familiar and patronizing. She disliked the name of “Marsh” exceedingly, especially upon the lips of this woman, a sort of second cousin of her stepmother’s. She would rather have chosen the new frock to pass under inspection of her stepmother without witnesses, but it was too late to turn back now. She must face it.

      Though Madam Schuyler’s equilibrium was a trifle disturbed, she was not one to show it before a visitor. Instantly she recovered her balance, and perhaps Marcia’s ordeal was less trying than if there had been no third person present.

      “That looks very well, child!” she said critically with a shade of complacence in her voice. It is true that Marcia had gone beyond orders in purchasing and making garments unknown to her, yet the neatness and fit could but reflect well upon her training. It did no harm for cousin Maria to see what a child of her training could do. It was, on the whole, a very creditable piece of work, and Madam Schuyler grew more reconciled to it as Marcia came down toward them.

      “Make it herself?” asked cousin Maria. “Why, Marsh, you did real well. My Matilda does all her own clothes now. It’s time you were learning. It’s a trifle longish to what you’ve been wearing them, isn’t it? But you’ll grow into it, I dare say. Got your hair a new way too. I thought you were Kate when you first started down stairs. You’ll make a good-looking young lady when you grow up; only don’t be in too much hurry. Take your girlhood while you’ve got it, is what I always tell Matilda.”

      Matilda was well on to thirty and showed no signs of taking anything else.

      Madam Schuyler smoothed an imaginary pucker across the shoulders and again pronounced the work good.

      “I picked berries and got the cloth,” confessed Marcia.

      Madam Schuyler smiled benevolently and patted Marcia’s cheek.

      “You needn’t have done that, child. Why didn’t you come to me for money? You needed something new, and that is a very good purchase, a little light, perhaps, but very pretty. We’ve been so busy with Kate’s things you have been neglected.”

      Marcia smiled with pleasure and passed into the dining room wondering what power the visitor had over her stepmother to make her pass over this digression from her rules so sweetly,—nay, even with praise.

      At supper they all rallied Marcia upon her changed appearance. Her father jokingly said that when the bridegroom arrived he would hardly know which sister to choose, and he looked from one comely daughter to the other with fatherly pride. He praised Marcia for doing the work so neatly, and inwardly admired the courage and independence that prompted her to get the money by her own unaided efforts rather than to ask for it, and later, as he passed through the room where she was helping to remove the dishes from the table, he paused and handed her a crisp five-dollar note. It had occurred to him that one daughter was getting all the good things and the other was having nothing. There was a pleasant tenderness in his eyes, a recognition of her rights as a young woman, that made Marcia’s heart exceedingly light. There was something strange about the influence this little new frock seemed to have upon people.

      Even Kate had taken a new tone with her. Much of the time at supper she had sat staring at her sister. Marcia wondered about it as she walked down toward the gate after her work was done. Kate had never seemed so quiet. Was she just beginning to realize that she was leaving home forever, and was she thinking how the home would be after she had left it? How she, Marcia, would take the place of elder sister, with only little Harriet and the boys, their stepsister and brothers, left? Was Kate sad over the thought of going so far away from them, or was she feeling suddenly the responsibility of the new position she was to occupy and the duties that would be hers? No, that could not be it, for surely