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Page 11
"Mine is from Louisa Agnew,--quite a long one, too. It's an age since we
heard from her, you know."
ASHBURN, April 24.
DEAR KATY,--Your delightful letter and invitation came day
before yesterday, and thank you for both. There is nothing in
the world that would please me better than to come to your
wedding if it were possible, but it simply isn't. If you lived
in New Haven now, or even Boston,--but Burnet is so dreadfully
far off, it seems as inaccessible as Kamchatka to a person who,
like myself, has a house to keep and two babies to take care of.
Don't look so alarmed. The house is the same house you saw when
you were here, and so is one of the babies; the other is a new
acquisition just two years old, and as great a darling as Daisy
was at the same age. My mother has been really better in health
since he came, but just now she is at a sort of Rest Cure in
Kentucky; and I have my hands full with papa and the children,
as you can imagine, so I can't go off two days' journey to a
wedding,--not even to yours, my dearest old Katy. I shall think
about you all day long on _the_ day, when I know which it is,
and try to imagine just how everything looks; and yet I don't
find that quite easy, for somehow I fancy that your wedding will
be a little different from the common run. You always were
different from other people to me, you know,--you and
Clover,--and I love you so much, and I always shall.
Papa has taken a kit-kat portrait of me in oils,--and a blue
dress,--which he thinks is like, and which I am going to send
you as soon as it comes home from the framers. I hope you will
like it a little for my sake. Dear Katy, I send so much love
with it.
I have only seen the Pages in the street since they came home
from Europe; but the last piece of news here is Lilly's
engagement to Comte Ernest de Conflans. He has something to do
with the French legation in Washington, I believe; and they
crossed in the same steamer. I saw him driving with her the
other day,--a little man, not handsome, and very dark. I do not
know when they are to be married. Your Cousin Clarence is in
Colorado.
With two kisses apiece and a great hug for you, Katy, I am
always
Your affectionate friend,
LOUISA.
"Dear me!" said the insatiable Clover, "is that the very last? I wish we
had another mail, and twelve more letters coming in at once. What a
blessed institution the post-office is!"
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST WEDDING IN THE FAMILY.
The great job of the cake-making over, a sense of leisure settled on the
house. There seemed nothing left to be done which need put any one out of
his or her way particularly. Katy had among her other qualities a great
deal of what is called "forehandedness." To leave things to be attended to
at the last moment in a flurry and a hurry would have been intolerable to
her. She firmly believed in the doctrine of a certain wise man of our own
day who says that to push your work before you is easy enough, but to pull
it after you is very hard indeed.
All that winter, without saying much about it,--for Katy did not "do her
thinking outside her head,"--she had been gradually making ready for the
great event of the spring. Little by little, a touch here and a touch
there, matters had been put in train, and the result now appeared in a
surprising ease of mind and absence of confusion. The house had received
its spring cleaning a fortnight earlier than usual, and was in fair, nice
order, with freshly-beaten carpets and newly-washed curtains. Katy's
dresses were ordered betimes, and had come home, been tried on, and folded
away ten days before the wedding. They were not many in number, but all
were pretty and in good taste, for the frigate was to be in Bar Harbor and
Newport for a part of the summer, and Katy wanted to do Ned credit, and
look well in his eyes and those of his friends.
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