No other in the whole world, not even her mother, did Lucina love as well as she loved her father, and the comfort and pleasure of no other had she so deeply at heart.

At the Squire’s elbow, standing faithfully by him until he should get his release, were his three friends:  John Jennings and Lawyer Eliphalet Means in their ancient swallow-tails—­John Jennings’s being of renowned London make, though nobody in Upham appreciated that—­and Colonel Jack Lamson in his old dress uniform.  Colonel Lamson, having grown stouter of late years, wore with a mighty discomfort of the flesh but with an unyielding spirit his old clothes of state.

“I’ll be damned if I thought I could get into ’em at first, Eben,” he had told the Squire when he arrived.  “Haven’t had them on since I was pall-bearer at poor Jim Pell’s funeral.  I was bound to do your girl honor, but I’ll be damned if I’ll dance in ’em—­I tell you it wouldn’t be safe, Eben.”

The Colonel looked with intense seriousness at his friend, then laughed hoarsely.  His laugh was always wheezy of late, and he breathed hard when he took exercise.

Sometime in his dim and shady past Colonel Lamson was reported to have had a wife.  She had never been seen in Upham, and was commonly believed to have died at some Western post during the first years of their marriage.  Probably the beautiful necklace of carved corals, which the Colonel had brought that night for a present to Lucina, had belonged to that long-dead young wife; but not even the Squire knew.

As for John Jennings, he had never had a wife, and the trinkets he had bestowed upon sweethearts remained still in their keeping; but he brought a pair of little pearly ear-rings for Lucina, and never wore his diamond shirt-button again.  Lawyer Eliphalet Means brought for his offering a sandal-wood fan, a veritable lacework of wood, spreading it himself in his lean brown hand, which matched in hue, and eying it with a sort of dryly humorous satisfaction before he gave it into Lucina’s keeping.

Squire Eben, despite his gratification for his daughter’s sake, burst into a great laugh.  “By the Lord Harry!” cried he; “you didn’t go into a shop yourself and ask for that folderol?”

“Got it through a sea-captain, from India, years ago,” replied the lawyer, laconically.

“Wouldn’t she take it?” inquired Colonel Lamson, with sly meaning, his round, protruding eyes staring hard at his friend and the fan.

“Never gave her the chance,” said Means, with a shrewd twinkle.  Then he turned to Lucina, with a stiff but courtly bow, and presented the sandal-wood fan, and not one of them knew then, nor ever after, its true history.

Lucina had joyfully heard the clang of the knocker when Jerome arrived, thinking that they were the last guests, and her father could have his pleasure.  Doctor Prescott had been called to Granby and would not come until late, if at all; the minister, it was reported, was ill with influenza—­she and her mother had agreed that the Squire need not wait for them.