CHAPTER XXXIV Meanwhile wedding proceedings were going on at the cottage with that consistent vigour with which Yankee people always drive operations when they know precisely what they are about. The wedding-day was definitively fixed for the 1st of August, and every one of the two weeks between had its particular significance and value precisely marked out and arranged in Mrs. Katy Scudder’s comprehensive and systematic schemes. It was settled that the newly-wedded pair were, for a while at least, to reside at the cottage. It might have been imagined, therefore, that no great external changes were in contemplation; but it is astonishing to see the amount of grave discussion, the amount of consulting, advising, and running abstractedly to and fro, which can be made to result out of an app

