My dress is finished.  I’m to be Maiden of Honor.  There are no bridesmaids.  Think of it!  Me, Mary Cary, once just flesh and blood mechanical, now a living creature who is to wear a white Swiss dress and a sash with pink rosebuds on it, and walk up the church aisle with my arms full of roses.  And—­magnificent gloriousness! most beautiful of all!—­every girl in this Asylum is to have a white dress and a sash the color she likes best to wear to the wedding.  That’s my wedding gift to the girls.  Uncle Parke gave it to me.

Miss Katherine’s California brother and his wife have come.  I don’t like them.  He looks bored to death, and chews the end of his mustache till you wonder there’s any left.  As for her, she’s the limit.  Maybe that’s what’s the matter with him.

She seems to be afraid some of us might touch her, and she stares as if we were figures in a china-shop.  No more says good-morning than if we were.

She wears seven rings on one hand and four on another, and rustles so when she walks she sounds like a churner out of order.  If she isn’t a bulgarian born, she’s bought herself into being one, for she oozes money.  It’s the only thing you think of when she’s around.  You can actually smell it.  I think Miss Katherine is sorry they came.  She don’t say it, of course, but plenty of things don’t have to be said.

Uncle Parke came last night, bringing his best friend and some others.  The best one is Doctor Willwood.  He’s fine.  He and I are going to come down the aisle together.  I reach up to his elbow, and he says he may put me in his pocket.  I wish he would.  I know I will be that frightened I’d be glad to get in it.

He wants to know all about Yorkburg and the people, and to-day Miss Bray let me take him all around the town and show him the antiquities.  He asked her.  I had on the white dress Miss Katherine gave me last summer, and I looked real nice, for I had on my company manners, too.

You see, he was from the West, and had never been to Virginia before; and when a man comes such a long way, one ought to put on company manners and be extra polite.  It wouldn’t be right not to.  I put mine on, and I guess I did do a lot of talking.  I’m by nature a talker, just like I can’t help skipping when my heart is happy and nothing hurts.

I told him about all the places we came to, and about who lived in them, except the Alden house which the Reagans now possess.  When we got there he stopped in front of it.

“My!” he said, “that’s a beautiful old place!  Whose is it?”

“Some people by the name of Reagan live there,” I said.  “I don’t know them.”  And I started on.

I came near forgetting, and saying, “That is Alden house, where my grandfather used to live,” but I remembered in time.  I don’t acknowledge my grandfather, and I knew somebody else would tell him Uncle Parke was born and lived there until he went West.

We had a grand time.  We stayed out over four hours, and I forgot all about dinner.  He didn’t want to go in when I suddenly remembered and told him I must, and then he said I was going to take dinner with him at the Colonial.  He’d asked Miss Bray, and it was all right.  And that’s what I did.  Took dinner with him at the Colonial!