BARBARA's WEDDING.
Barbara had now been at home for some time making preparations for her wedding, and had cordially invited all the children to see her married,—Grace, Cassy, Prudy and Horace; everybody but little "Ruffle-neck," as Horace sometimes called the baby.
They set out in the morning in high spirits, Grace and Cassy walking under one umbrella, Horace and Prudy under another. Prudy was bareheaded, and her "killing little curls" were blown into wild confusion by the breezes.
The June air was very sweet, for it was "snowing roses." Prudy asked Horace if he didn't think "the world smelt nice?" Horace put on a look of calm superiority, and replied that "the flowers were very much like essence bottles, to be sure, what we call odiferous, Prudy."
Some way behind the two children sailed the other umbrella, marked, in white paint, "Stolen from H. S. Clifford;" while under it Grace and Cassy talked confidentially.
Prudy had heard they were going to a place called the Bayou, and supposed it to be some sort of a house. But after a walk of two miles, they came to an immense field, where the corn shot up very tall and luxuriant.
"There's the bayou over yonder," laid Horace, with a sweep of his thumb.
"Where?" said Prudy, straining her eyes. "I don't see a single thing but sugar-canes."
"Corn, you mean! Well, it's a bayou, and the water runs up over it in the spring, and that makes bottom-land rich as mud."
Prudy stared at the cornfield, then at the river.