exclaimed Aunt Jane, as she surveyed her dinner-table, "looks
like Mary Andrews' dinner-party, don't it? However, there's a plenty
of it such as it is, and good enough what there is of it, as the old
man said; so set down, child, and help yourself."

A loaf of Aunt Jane's salt-rising bread, a plate of golden butter, a
pitcher of Jersey milk, and a bowl of honey in the comb,--who would
ask for more? And as I sat down I blessed the friendly rain that had
kept me from going home.

"But who was Mary Andrews? and what about her dinner-party?" I asked,
as I buttered my bread.

"Eat your dinner, child, and then we'll talk about Mary Andrews,"
laughed Aunt Jane. "If I'd 'a' thought before I spoke, which I hardly
ever do, I wouldn't 'a' mentioned Mary Andrews, for I know you won't
let me see any rest till you know all about her."

And Aunt Jane was quite right. A summer rain, and a story, too!

"I reckon there's mighty few livin' that ricollect about Mary Andrews
and her dinner-party," she said meditatively an hour later, when the
dishes had been washed and we were seated in the old-fashioned parlor.

"Mary Andrews' maiden name was Crawford. A first cousin of Sam
Crawford she was. Her father was Jerry Crawford, a brother of Old Man
Bob, and her mother was a Simpson. People used to say that the
Crawfords and the Simpsons was like two mud-puddles with a ditch
between, always runnin' together. I ricollect one year three Crawford
sisters married three Simpson brothers. Mary was about my age, and
she married Harvey Andrews a little over a year after me and Abram
married, and there's few women I ever knew better and liked more than
I did Mary Andrews.

"I ricollect her weddin' nearly as well as I do my own. My Jane was
jest a month old, and I had to ask mother to come over and stay with
the baby while I went to the weddin'. I hadn't thought much about what
I'd wear--I'd been so taken up with the baby--and I ricollect I went
to the big chest o' drawers in the spare room and jerked out my
weddin' dress, and says I to mother, 'There'll be two brides at the
weddin'!'

"But, bless your life, when I tried to make it meet around my waist,
why, it lacked four or five inches of comin' together; and mother set
and laughed fit to kill, and, says she, 'Jane, that dress was made for
a young girl, and you'll never be a young girl again!' And I says,
'Well, I may never fasten this dress around my waist again, but I
don't know what's to hin