on herself to almost any extent rather than call upon Pomona, when the latter was entertaining an evening visitor in the kitchen or on the back porch.
"Suppose my mother," she once remarked, in answer to a mild remonstrance from me in regard to a circumstance of this nature—"suppose my mother had rushed into our presence when we were plighting our vows, and had told me to go down into the cellar and crack ice!"
It was of no use to talk to Euphemia on such subjects; she always had an answer ready.
"You don't want Pomona to go off and be married, do you?" I asked, one day as she was putting up some new muslin curtains in the kitchen. "You seem to be helping her to do this all you can, and yet I don't know where on earth you will get another girl who will suit you so well."
"I don't know either," replied Euphemia, with a tack in her mouth, "and I'm sure I don't want her to go. But neither do I want winter to come, or to have to wear spectacles; but I suppose both of these will happen, whether I like it or not."
For some time after this Pomona had very little company, and we began to think that there was no danger of any present matrimonial engagement on her part—a thought which was very gratifying to us, although we did not wish in any way to interfere with her prospects—when, one afternoon, she quietly went up into the village and was married.
Her husband was a tall young fellow, a son of a farmer in the country, who had occasionally been to see her, but whom she must have frequently met on her "afternoons out."
When Pomona came home and told us this news we were certainly well surprised.
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