ought to have been yellow—every woman should be fair, every man should be dark, in my opinion. I don't think many young women could drown themselves with decency now-a-days: their locks are not ample enough, unless eked out with pilferings from the impecunious living and helpless dead. And if they tied any false curls and tails on for the occasion, it would somewhat take the edge off our pity to see the hapless maiden lying in one place, and her back hair in another. We Adairs are well off in the respect of head coverings, rather too well off in fact; for in hot weather our abundant manes are no joke, and we are inclined to envy our more lightly crowned neighbours who appear at church in chignons, that are the most innocent of deceptions, and provoke mirth, not admiration. Only last Sunday a disastrous casualty occurred to a farmer's wife sitting in the pew exactly before us. Her chignon parted its moorings, and, suspended by a single wisp, hung down her back and over our pew, bobbing up and down in a horribly active manner, causing lively fear in our ranks; for in the too probable event of its falling into our midst, who among us would be found to possess sufficient aplomb to hand it to the denuded lady?
I pull off my sun-bonnet, for no one is likely to see me, and the cows yonder will tell no tales; and putting my wreath upon my head bend over the brook to try and see my own reflection. Close to the edge there is a little shallow, fenced about with sticks and stones, and in it I see my face, framed in its poppy wreath and loose veil of brown hair.
"Not bad!" I say aloud. "Now if your nose were a little longer, and your mouth a little smaller, you wouldn't be an ill-looking young person, as girls go; but as it is, you are precisely what your amiable papa says you are, the———"
"Prettiest little girl in Christendom," says a man's voice behind
