Love's bitterest cup

The good folk of our county always seized with gladness any fair excuse for merry-making, especially in the dead of winter, when farm work was slack.

Now the marriage of the popular young doctor with the well-liked young teacher was one of the best of excuses for general outbreak into gayety.

True, the newly married pair wished to settle down at once in their pretty cottage home, and be quiet.

But they were not to be permitted to do so.

Every family to whom the young doctor stood in the relation of attendant physician gave either a dinner or a dancing party.

Judge Paul McCann, an old bachelor, who was one of his most valuable patients—a chronic patient dying of good living, and taking a long, long time to do it in—gave a heavy dinner party, to which he invited only married or middle-aged people—such as the elder Forces, Grandieres, Elks, and—Miss Bayard, who did not attend.

This dinner came off on the Monday after the marriage, and was a great success.

Every one was pleased, except the young people who had nothing to do with it.

“Selfish old rhinoceros! Wouldn’t give a dancing party because he’s got the gout! And Natty so fond of dancing, too!” growled Wynnette, over her disappointment on that occasion.

But the Grandieres consoled her and all the young people by giving a dancing party at Oldfields on the following Wednesday, and inviting all the members, young and old, of every family in the neighborhood.

This party was but a repetition, with improvements, on the New Year’s Eve party, just four weeks previous; for again there was a full moon, a deep, level snow, frozen over, and fine sleighing, and all circumstances combined to make the entertainment a most enjoyable one.

This frolic was followed on Friday with a dancing party given by the Elks at Grove Hill, to which the same people were invited, and where they talked, laughed and danced as merrily as before.

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.