"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 hinder me from bein' a young girl all my life.'
"I wish to goodness," she went on, "that I could ricollect what I wore to Mary Andrews' weddin'. I know I didn't wear my weddin' dress, and I know I went, but to save my life I can't call up the dress I had on. It ain't like me to forgit the clothes I used to wear, but I can't call it up. However, what I wore to Mary Andrews' weddin' ain't got anything to do with Mary Andrews' dinner-party."
Aunt Jane paused and scratched her head reflectively with a knitting needle. Evidently she was loath to go on with her story till the memory of that wedding garment should return to her.
"I was readin' the other day," she continued, "about somethin' they've got off yonder in Washington, some sort of bureau that tells folks what the weather'll be, and warns the ships about settin' off on a voyage when there's a storm ahead. And says I to myself, 'Do you reckon they'll ever git so smart that they can tell what sort o' weather there is ahead o' two people jest married and settin' out on the voyage that won't end till death parts 'em? and what sort o' weather they're goin' to have six months from the weddin' day?' The world's gittin' wiser every day, child, but there ain't nobody wise enough to tell what sort of a husband a man's goin' to make, nor what sort of a wife a woman's goin' to make, nor how a weddin' is goin' to turn out. I've watched folks marryin' for more'n seventy years, and I don't know much more about it than I did when I was a ten-year-old child. I've seen folks marry when it looked like certain destruction for both of 'em, and all at once they'd take a turn that'd surprise everybody, and things would come out all right with 'em. There was Wick Harris and Virginia Matthews. Wick was jest such a boy as Dick Elrod, and Virginia was another Annie Crawford. She'd never done a stitch o' sewin' nor cooked a meal o' victuals in her life, and I ricollect her mother sayin' she didn't know which she felt sorriest for, Wick or Virginia, and she wished to goodness there was a law to keep such folks from marryin'. But, bless your life! instead o' comin' to shipwreck like Dick and Annie, they settled down as steady as any old married couple you ever saw. Wick quit his drinkin' and gamblin', and Virginia, why, there wasn't a better housekeeper in the state nor a better mother'n she got to be.