We talked it over, and neither of us see why not. Mis’ Sykes, when she gives her series of companies, three in three days running, she often don’t set foot in the parlor till after the refreshments are served. I remember once she was so faint she had to go back to the kitchen and eat her own supper, and we didn’t say good-by to her at all, except as some of us that knew her best went and stuck our heads out the kitchen door. So with all us ladies--we done the same way when we entertained, so be we give ’em any kind of a lay-out. “I won’t say anything about the party bein’ for Maria, one way or the other,” she says; “I won’t make a spread about it, nor much of an event. I’ll just send out invites for a quiet time. Then when they come, you can stay in the room with Maria at first an’ get her introduced. An’ after that the party can go ahead on its own legs, just as well without me as with me. I could only fly in now an’ then anyhow, an’ talk to ’em snatchy, with my mind on the supper. Why ain’t it just as good to stay right out of it altogether?” We see it reasonable. And a couple of days before Maria Carpenter was expected, Mis’ Fire Chief, she went to work, Harriet helping her, and she got her invitations out. They was on some black bordered paper and envelopes that Mis’ Fire Chief had had for a mourning Christmas present an’ had been saving. And they was worded real delicate, like Mis’ Fire Chief done everything: Mrs. Merriman, At Home, Thursday afternoon, Four o’clock Sharp, Thimbles. Six o’clock Supper. Walk right in past the bell. It made quite a little stir in Friendship Village, because Mis’ Merriman hadn’t been anywheres yet. But everybody took it all right. And anyway, everybody was too busy getting ready, to bother much over anything else. It’s quite a problem to know what to wear to a winter company in Friendship Village. Nobody entertains much of any in the winter--its a chore to get the parlor cleaned and het, and it’s cold for ’em to lay off their things, and you can’t think up much that’s tasty for refreshments, being it’s too cold to give ’em ice cream. Mis’ Fire Chief was giving the party on the afternoon of Miss Carpenter’s three o’clock arrival, in the frank an’ public hope that somebody would dance around during her stay and give her a return invite out to tea or somewheres. The morning of the day that was the day, there come a rap to my door while I was stirring up my breakfast, and there was Harriet Wells, bare-headed and a shawl around her, and looking summer-sweet in her little pink muslin dressing sacque that matched her cheeks and showed off her blue eyes. “Aunt Hettie wants to know,” she says, “whether you can’t come over now so’s to get an early start. She’s afraid the train’ll get in before we’re ready for it.”