CHAPTER I.
NIGHT BEFORE THANKSGIVING.
"Oh, I do hope it will be pleasant to-morrow," said Lizzie Dayton, as on the night before Thanksgiving she stood at the parlor window, watching a dense mass of clouds, behind which the sun had lately gone to his nightly rest.
"I hope so, too," said Lucy, coming forward and joining her sister; "but then it isn't likely it will be.

There has been a big circle around the moon these three nights, and besides that, I never knew it fail to storm when I was particularly anxious that it should be pleasant;" and the indignant beauty pouted very becomingly at the insult so frequently offered by that most capricious of all things, the weather.
"Thee shouldn't talk so, Lucy," said Grandma Dayton, who was of Quaker descent, at the same time holding up between herself and the window the long stocking which she was knitting.

"Doesn't thee know that when thee is finding fault with the weather thee finds fault with Him who made the weather ?" "I do wish, grandma," answered Lucy, "that I could ever say anything which did not furnish you with a text from which to preach me a sermon." Grandma did not reply directly to this rather uncivil speech, but, she continued: "I don't see how the weather will hurt thee, if it's the party thee is thinking of, for Mr.Graham's is only ten rods or so from here.
"I'm not afraid I can't go," answered Lucy; "but you know as well as I that if the wind blows enough to put out a candle, father is so old-maidish as to think Lizzie and I must wear thick stockings and dresses, and I shouldn't wonder if he insisted on flannel wrappers!" "Well," answered grandma, "I think myself it will be very imprudent for Lizzie, in her present state of health, to expose her neck and arms.

Thy poor marm died with consumption when she wasn't much older than thee is.

Let me see--she was twenty-three the day she died, and thee was twenty-two in Sep--" "For heaven's sake, grandmother," interrupted Lucy, "don't continually remind me of my age, and tell me how much younger mother was when she was married.