presents. They had a lot of dead relations who used to be rich and
haughty, but their living ones are as poor as the people they didn't
used to know, and hardly anybody gave them anything handsome.

Miss Katherine's presents are just amazing, and my eyes are blistered by
the shine of them. I didn't know before such things were in the world.
People say Uncle Parke has made a lot of money in some mines out West,
besides being a doctor, and that he doesn't have to work. "But a man who
doesn't work hasn't any excuse for living," I heard him tell somebody,
and maybe it's so, though I don't know.

I don't know anything these days. I'm the shape and size of Mary Cary,
but I see and hear so many things I never saw and heard before that I'd
like to borrow a dog to see if he knows whether I am myself or somebody
else. And another thing I'd like to find out is, How do other people
know so much?

Mrs. Philip Creekmore has a cousin whose wife's brother lives in the
same place Uncle Parke does, and Miss Amelia Cokeland wrote out there
and found out all about him. But it doesn't matter whether she truly
knows anything or not. Miss Webb says she is like those fish scientists.
Give her one bone, and she can tell you all the rest. She's had a grand
time telling more things about Uncle Parke than Miss Katherine will ever
learn in this world.

My dress is finished. I'm to be Maiden of Honor. There are no
bridesmaids. Think of it! Me, Mary Cary, once just flesh and blood
mechanical, now a living creature who is to wear a white Swiss dress and
a sash with pink rosebuds on it, and walk up the church aisle with my
arms full of roses. And--magnificent gloriousness! most beautiful of