Mary Cary: "Frequently Martha"

by Kate Langley Bosher

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 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.