"Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Holcomb left the hall about five o'clock to go home an' lay out Silas's an' Timothy's an' Eppleby's best clothes for 'em—the rest hed done it at noon. Mis' Hubbelthwait was goin' over to the hotel to get some dishes out, an' I went with her to help. The bar was to the back, where Threat set an' slep' an' fiddled, an' Mis' Hubbelthwait was goin' to slip in still an' sly the dishes out to me. A good many of the hotel dishes was her individual weddin' presents, so she didn't think wrong of her conscience.
"We was all five hurryin' along together, rehearsin' all we'd got to do before six-thirty, when we heard a funny sound. We listened, an' we thought they must be testin' the hose. But when we got to Lyddy's shop, where the street kitters off some in a curve, we looked ahead an' we see it wasn't that.
"It's an automobile," says Mis' Toplady. 'My land,' she says, 'it ain't only one. It's two.'
"An' we see it was. There come the two of 'em, ploughin' along through the awful sand of Daphne Street, that was fit for no human locomotive, unless ostriches. When the Proudfits are here, that's the only one in the village with an automobile, they understand the sand, and they'd put on the whole steam and tear right along through it. But strangers would go careful, for fear they'd get stuck, an' so they got it, like you do. An' them two big red cars was comin' slow, the dust like cloaks an' curtains billowin' up behind. They looked quite wild, includin' the seven folks in each one that was laughin' an' callin' out. An' by the time they'd come up to us, us four ladies of the Sodality an' Mis' Hubbelthwait was lined up on the walk watchin' 'em. They stopped an' one of 'em hailed us, leanin' past his driver.
"'I beg your pardon,' he says, 'is this the street to the best hotel?'
"It was Mis' Toplady that answered him, rill collected. 'They's only one street in town,' says she, 'an' they's only one hotel, an' that they ain't now.'
"'Can you tell me how soon there will be one?' says the man. 'By dinner-time, I hope.'
"We all felt kind of delicate about answerin' this, an' so Mis' Hubbelthwait herself spoke up. 'Threat's drunk an' fiddlin', she says. 'They's no tellin' when Friendship Village will ever hev a hotel again.'
"Both automobiles was listenin' by then, an' though some of 'em laughed out sort o' rueful, not many of 'em see the funny.
"'Gad,' one of the men says, 'how about the bird an' the bottle we were to send back to Bonner, sittin' by his tire in the desert, a ways back? Don't tell us there's no place,' he says, 'where we can find dinner, twenty-one of us and the three chauf—' that word.