Heiress and Beauty

'Tis hard upon the dawn, and yet
She comes not from the ball.
The night is cold and bleak and wet,
And the snow lies over all.

I praised her with her diamonds on!
And as she went she smiled,
And yet I sighed when she was gone,
I sighed like any child.

--Meredith.

Meanwhile all Claudia Merlin's time was taken up with milliners, mantua
makers, and jewelers. She was to make her first appearance in society at
the President's first evening reception, which was to be held on Friday,
the sixth of January. It was now very near the New Year, and all her
intervening time was occupied in preparations for the festivities that
were to attend it.

On the twenty-third of December, two days before Christmas, Mr. and
Mrs. Middleton and all their family arrived. They came up by the
"Columbia," and reached Judge Merlin's house early in the morning.
Consequently they were not fatigued, and the day of their arrival was a
day of unalloyed pleasure and of family jubilee.

Ishmael took sympathetic part in all the rejoicings, and was caressed by
Mr. and Mrs. Middleton and all their younger children as a sort of
supplementary son and brother.

On Christmas Eve, also, Reuben Gray, Hannah, and her children came to
town in their wagon. Honest Reuben had brought a load of turkeys for the
Christmas market, and had "put up" at a plain, respectable inn, much
frequented by the farmers, near the market house; but in the course of
the day he and his wife, leaving the children in the care of their
faithful Sally, who had accompanied them in the character of nurse,
called on Ishmael and brought him his trunk of wearing apparel.