The career of a fashionable belle is not to be supported without something of an outlay; and that innocence of arithmetical combinations, over which she was wont to laugh bewitchingly among her adorers, sometimes led to results quite astounding to the prosaic, hard-working papa, who stood financially responsible for all her finery.
Mamma had often been called in to calm the tumult of his feelings on such semi-annual developments; and she did it by pointing out to him that this heavy present expense was an investment by which Lillie was, in the end, to make her own fortune and that of her family.
When Lillie contemplated the marriage-service with a view to going through it with John, there was one clause that stood out in consoling distinctness,--"_With all my worldly goods I thee endow_." As to the other clause, which contains the dreadful word "OBEY," about which our modern women have such fearful apprehensions, Lillie was ready to swallow it without even a grimace.
"Obey John!" Her face wore a pretty air of droll assurance at the thought.

It was too funny.
"My dear," said Belle Trevors, who was one of Lillie's incense-burners and a bridesmaid elect, "_have_ you the least idea how rich he is ?" "He is well enough off to do about any thing I want," said Lillie.
"Well, you know he owns the whole village of Spindlewood, with all those great factories, besides law business," said Belle.

"But then they live in a dreadfully slow, pokey way down there in Springdale.
They haven't the remotest idea how to use money." "I can show him how to use it," said Lillie.
"He and his sister keep a nice sort of old-fashioned place there, and jog about in an old countrified carriage, picking up poor children and visiting schools.

She is a _very_ superior woman, that sister." "I don't like superior women," said Lillie.
"But you must like her, you know.

John is perfectly devoted to her, and I suppose she is to be a fixture in the establishment." "We shall see about that," said Lillie.