I don't know anything these days. I'm the shape and size of Mary Cary, but I see and hear so many things I never saw and heard before that I'd like to borrow a dog to see if he knows whether I am myself or somebody else. And another thing I'd like to find out is, How do other people know so much?

Mrs. Philip Creekmore has a cousin whose wife's brother lives in the same place Uncle Parke does, and Miss Amelia c.o.keland wrote out there and found out all about him. But it doesn't matter whether she truly knows anything or not. Miss Webb says she is like those fish scientists.

Give her one bone, and she can tell you all the rest. She's had a grand time telling more things about Uncle Parke than Miss Katherine will ever learn in this world.

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!

I tell you, Mary Martha Cary had what you could truly call a Time. And Doctor Willwood said he never had enjoyed a morning in his life like that one. Laugh? I never heard a man laugh so hearty. Half the time I couldn't tell why. I'd be real serious, but he'd look at me and almost die laughing. I bet I said some things I oughtn't, but I don't remember, and I couldn't take them back if I did.

It's over. The wedding is over. Everything is after a while in this life, even death; and time is the only thing that keeps on just the same.

They're gone. Gone on their bridal tour, and the happiness that's left Yorkburg would run a family for a long life. I wish everybody could have seen that wedding. It's going to be long remembered, for the earth and sky, and birds and flowers, and trees and sunshine all took part.

Everything tried to help, and as for blessings on them, they took away enough for the human race. But now it's over I feel like my first balloon looked when I stuck a pin in it to see what would happen. I saw.

I had a telegram from them to-day. It said:

We sail at eleven o'clock. Love to all, and hearts full for Mary Cary.

UNCLE PARKE and AUNT KATHERINE.

Well, she's my Aunt now. That's fixed, anyhow, and the marriage that fixed it was a beauty. Every bird in Yorkburg was singing, every flower was blooming, and every heart was blessing; and when those fifty-eight orphans walked in, all in white and two by two, every hand was dropping roses. And that is what each girl was wishing: Roses, roses all her life!

After the ushers, I came in all alone by myself; that is, my shape did.

Mary was really inside the altar looking at me coming up slow and easy, and Martha was ordering me to keep step to the music. "All right, I'm doing my best," I was saying to both. And I was, but I was thankful when I got to where I could stop, for my legs were so excited I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd turned and run out.

Behind me came Miss Katherine, on her Army brother's arm. He's as nice as the other isn't. He hasn't got the money-making disease. When Uncle Parke and Doctor Willwood came out of the vestry-room Uncle Parke gave me one look, just one, but it was so understanding I winked back, and then he came farther down and stood by Miss Katherine like she was his until kingdom come, forever more. Amen.

Then the minister began, and the music was so soft you could hear the birds outside. The breeze through the window blew right on Miss Katherine's veil, and I was so busy watching it I didn't know the time had come to pray, and I hardly got my head bent before I had to take it up again. Then the minister was through, and I was walking down the aisle with Doctor Willwood, and in just about two minutes more we were back at the Asylum, and it was all over--the thing we'd been looking forward to so long.

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 mult.i.tude 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.

Uncle Parke and Aunt Katherine have been on the ocean three days. I wonder if they are sick. I don't think I will go to Europe with my children's father. I was seasick once on land, and there wasn't a human being I even liked that day. It would be bad to find out so soon that the very sight of your husband makes you ill. After you know him better, you could tell him to go off somewhere; but at first I suppose you have to be polite.

They were awful nice about wanting me to go with them. The bride and groom were. They said I had to, and they were so surprised when I said I couldn't that they didn't think I meant it. When they found out I did, they were dreadfully worried, and didn't know what to do next. There wasn't anything to do, and here I am. Here I'm going to be, too, until the first day of October, when they will be back, and we will start for the West, for Michigan.

I'm going to like Michigan. I've decided before I get there. I know there will be something to like, there always is in every place and every person, Miss Katherine says, if you just will see it instead of the all wrong. I was by nature born critical. There are a lot of things I don't like in this world, but there's no use in mentioning them. As for opinions, if they're not pleasant they'd better be kept to yourself.

I learned that early in life and forget it every day.

I'm going to try and think Michigan is a grand place, and next to Virginia the best to live in. They couldn't, _couldn't_ expect me to think it was like Virginia!

Perhaps, after a while, Uncle Parke may come back. For over two hundred years his people have lived here, and sometimes I believe he feels just like that dog did who had his call in him. The call of the place that the first dogs came from, that wild, free place, and I think Uncle Parke wants to come back, wants to be with his own people.

Out West is very convenient, though, Peggy Green says. She has an aunt who used to live out there, and she told her you could do as you choose in almost everything. If husbands and wives didn't like each other, there was no trouble in getting new ones. They could get a divorce and marry somebody else.

I wonder what a divorce is. We've never had one in Yorkburg, and I never knew until the other day that when you got married it wasn't really truly permanent. I thought it was for ever and ever and until death parted. The prayer-book says so, and I thought it meant it.

By the time I'm grown I guess I'll find a lot of things are said and not meant. Maybe when I find out I will be all the gladder to come back to Yorkburg, where people don't seem to know much about these new-fashioned things. Where they still believe in the old ones, and just live on and don't hurry, and are kind and polite and dear, if they are slow and queer and proud a little bit.

It makes me have such a funny feeling in my throat when I think about going away. I'm trying not to think. But I do. Think all the time. I want this summer to be the happiest the children ever had. It's the last for me. That sounds consumptive, but I don't mean that way. I mean it's my last Orphan summer.

Of course, I'm glad, awful glad; but I'm so sorry the other children aren't going, too. For them it's prunes and blue-and-white calico to look forward to until they're eighteen. Year in and year out, prunes and calico.

But maybe it isn't. If Mary Cary will do her part something nicer may happen. She doesn't know yet the way to make it happen, having nothing much to send back but love. Somebody says love finds the way. Oh, Mary Cary, you and Love _must_ find a way!

THE END