The Asylum looked real nice that morning.  There were bushels and bushels of flowers in it, for everybody in town who had any sent them.  Flowers cover a multitude of poverties.  The reception was grand.  That California Richness called it a breakfast, but that was pure style.  Yorkburg don’t have breakfast between twelve and one, and everybody else called it 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 stand her, he’ll do well to get her.  She’s a grand manager on little.

He was at the wedding, too.  His beard was flowinger and redder, and the part in the back of his head shininger than ever.  He had an elegant time.  He was so full of himself you would have thought it was his own party.