She's still an old maid,
Though she would not have been
Could she have mar-ri-ed any kind of man.
But she could not.
So to the Humane
She came, and caus-ed a good deal of pain.
3
But now she's here
To be married, and go
Away with her red-headed, red-bearded beau.
Have mercy, Lord,
And help him to bear
What we've been doing this many a year!
And such singing! We'd been practising in the back part of the yard, and humming in bed, so as to get the words into the tune; but we hadn't let out until that night. That night we let go.
There's nothing like singing from your heart, and, though I was the minister and stood on a box which was shaky, I sang, too. I led.
The bride didn't think it was modest to hold up her head, and she was the only silent one. But the bridegroom and bridesmaids sang, and it sounded like the revivals at the Methodist church. It was grand.
And that bride! She was Miss Bray. A graven image of her couldn't have been more like her.
She was stuffed in the right places, and her hair was frizzed just like Miss Bray's. Frizzed in front, and slick and tight in the back; and her face was a purple pink, and powdered all over, with a piece of dough just above her mouth on the left side to correspond with Miss Bray's mole.
And she held herself so like her, shoulders back, and making that little nervous sniffle with her nose, like Miss Bray makes when she's excited, that once I had to wink at her to stop.
The groom didn't look like Dr. Rudd. But she wore men's clothes, and that's the only way you'd know some men were men, and almost anything will do for a groom. Nobody noticed him.