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suspicious at receiving invitations. But they talked. In that they
showed their inalienable republican freedom. They moved along as
unquestioningly as European peasants, in their grooves, but their
tongues soared. In speech, as is the way with an American, they held
nothing sacred, not even the institutions which they propped, not
even themselves. They might remain unquestioningly, even preferredly,
outside the doors of superiority, but out there they raised a clamor
of self-assertion. Their tongues wagged with prodigious activity
utterly unleashed. In the days before Ina Carroll's wedding all
Banbridge seethed and boiled like a pot with gossip, and gossip full
of malice and sneer, and a good deal of righteous indignation.
Anderson heard much of it. Neither he nor his mother was asked to the
wedding. The Carrolls had not even considered the possibility of such
a thing. Mrs. Anderson spoke of it one evening at tea.

"I hear they are going to have quite a wedding at those new
people's," said she; "a wedding in the church, and reception
afterwards at the house. Miss Josie Eggleston and Agnes and Mrs.
Monroe were in here this afternoon, and they were speaking about it.
They said the young lady was having her trousseau made at Mrs.
Griggs's, and everybody thought it rather singular. They are going to
the wedding and reception. They inquired if we were going, and I said
that we had not been invited, that we had not called. I have been
intending to call ever since they came, but now, of course, it is out
of the question until after the wedding." Mrs. Anderson spoke with a
slight regret. A mild curiosity was a marked trait of hers. "I
suppose we could go to the church even if we had no invitation; I
suppose many will do that," she said, a little wistfully, after a
pause.

"Do you think it wise, without an invitation?" asked Anderson, rather
amusedly.

"Why, I don't know, really, dear, that it could do any harm--that is,
lower one's dignity at all. Of course it is not as if we had called.
If we had called and then received no invitation, the slight would
have been marked. But of course we were not invited simply because we
had not called--"

"Still, I think I should rather not go, under the circumstances,
mother," Anderson said, quietly.

"Well, perhaps you are right, dear," said his mother. "It seems to me
that you may be a trifle too punctilious; still, it is best to err on
the safe side, and, after all, these are ne