It was a lady, and a bird of a lady, too, else why should Cale Parker be wearing a coat, and be otherwise dooded and fixed up beyond any wedding?
Judd and his friends were somewhat excited over Parker.
Fisbee was clad in his best shabby black, which lent an air of state to the occasion, but Mr.Parker--Caleb Parker, whose heart, during his five years of residence in Plattville, had been steel-proof against all the feminine blandishments of the town, whose long, lank face had shown beneath as long, and lanker, locks of proverbially uncombed hair, he who had for weeks conspicuously affected a single, string-patched suspender, who never, even upon the Sabbath day, wore a collar or blacked his shoes--what aesthetic leaven had entered his soul that he donned not a coat alone but also a waistcoat with checks ?--and, more than _that_, a gleaming celluloid collar ?--and, more than that, a brilliant blue tie?
What had this iron youth to do with a rising excitement at train time and brilliant blue ties?
Also, it might have been inquired if this parade of fashion had no connection with the simultaneous action of Mr.Ross Schofield; for Ross was at this hour engaged in decorating the battered chairs in the "Herald" editorial room with blue satin ribbon, the purchase of which at the Dry Goods Emporium had been directed by a sudden inspiration of his superior of the composing force.

It was Ross's intention to garnish each chair with an elaborately tied bow, but, as he was no sailor and understood only the intricacies of a hard-knot, he confined himself to that species of ornamentation, leaving, however, very long ends of ribbon hanging down after the manner of the pendants of rosettes.
It scarcely needs the statement that his labors were in honor of the new editor-in-chief of the Carlow "Herald." The advent and the purposes of this personage were, as yet, known certainly to only those of the "Herald" and to the Briscoes.

It had been arranged, however, that Minnie and her father were not to come to the station, for the journalistic crisis was immoderately pressing; the "Herald" was to appear on the morrow, and the new editor wished to plunge directly, and without the briefest distraction, into the paper's difficulties, now accumulated into a veritable sea of troubles.

The editor was to be delivered to the Briscoes at eventide and returned by them again at dewy morn; and this was to be the daily programme.

It had been further--and most earnestly--stipulated that when the wounded proprietor of the ailing journal should be informed of the addition to his forces, he was not to know, or to have the slenderest hint of, the sex or identity of the person in charge during his absence.