a
reception. As for the people at it, there were more kinds than were ever
in one dining-room before; and every single one had a good time. Every
one.

You see, Miss Katherine, besides being who she was, was what she was.
Having known a great deal about all sorts of people since being a nurse,
and finding out that the plain and the fancy, the rich and the poor,
those who've had a chance and those who haven't, are a heap more alike
than people think, she said she was going to invite to her wedding
whoever she wanted. And she did.

There wasn't one invited who didn't come: the bent and the broke and the
blind (that's true, for old Mr. Forbes is bent, and Mrs. Rowe's hip was
broken and she uses crutches, and Bobbie Anderson is blind); and the
old, that's the high-born coat-of-arms kind; and the new, that's the
Reagans and Hinchmans and some others, and Mr. Pinkert the shoemaker,
who, she says, is a gentleman if he don't remember his grandfather's
name; and Miss Ginnie Grant, who made her underclothes--all were there.
All. It was a different wedding from any that was ever before in
Yorkburg, and if any feelings were hurt it was because they were trying
to be. Some feelings are kept for that purpose.

Of course, Mrs. Christopher Pryor had remarks to make. "Katherine always
was too independent," I heard her tell Miss Queechy Spence. "But I don't
believe in anything of the kind. If you once let people get out of the
place they were born in, there'll be no doing anything with them. You
mark me, if this wedding don't make trouble. Some of these people will
expect to be invited to my house next." And she took another helping of
salad that was enough for three. She's an awful eater.

"Oh no, they won't," said Miss Queechy. "They know better than to expect
anything like that of you," and she gave me a little wink and walked off
with Mr. Morris, who's her beau. I went off, too. It isn't safe for
Martha Cary to be too near Mrs. Pryor, for Mary never knows what she
may do.

And, oh, you ought to have seen Miss Bray! She was stepsister to the
Queen of Sheba. Solomon never had a wife arrayed like she was on that
twenty-seventh day of June. I believe she is engaged to Doctor Rudd. I
really do.

You see, after people got over teasing him about that make-believe
wedding, he got to thinking about her. He's bound to know he isn't much
of a man, and no young girl would have him, so lately he's been ambling
'round Miss Bray. If he can