And do you think that the descendant of the “Dook of England” was one to neglect her social duties, or to be left behind in the competition of hospitable attentions to the bride and groom because her house was small and her means were even smaller?
Not at all! So she determined to give a dancing party on the next Tuesday evening, and invite all the neighborhood with his wife and children, and “his sisters, aunts and cousins.”
“But, great Jehosophat, Aunt Sibby, if you ask all these people, what are you going to do with them? They can’t all get into the house, you know!” exclaimed Roland Bayard, while his aunt and himself were forming a committee of ways and means.
“That’s their business! My business is to invite them to a party, and to open the door. Their business is to get in the house—if they can. Do your duty, sez I! Without fear or favor, sez I! Do the proper thing, sez I! unregardless of consequences, sez I! My duty is to give a party to the bride and groom, and I’m a-going to do it! Take your own share of the world’s play, sez I, as well as the world’s work, sez I! We can’t live our lives over again, sez I!
“‘Live while you live, the sacred preachers say,
And seize the pleasures of the passing day.’”
“I think you have got that quotation wrong, auntie,” said Roland.
“’Tain’t quotation, you ignomanners! It’s verses out of the ‘English Reader’ as I used to study when I went to school to young Luke Barriere, when he was young Luke, and before he left off teaching and divested all his yearnings into a grocery.”
“Well, you have got the lines wrong, anyway, Aunt Sibby.”
“I tell you I ain’t! What do you know about it? I’ve read more verse books than ever you knew the names of! But that ain’t nothing to the point! What I want you to do is to take the mule cart and drive round the neighborhood, and invite all the company—everybody that we saw at all the other parties! Every one of ’em—childun and all! When you do a thing, sez I, do it well, sez I! What’s worth a-doing of at all, sez I, is worth doing well, sez I!”