This so
disturbed poor Mrs. Browne, who really wished to please every body, that
but for the interference of Allen and Augusta she would have gone
immediately to the offended washerwoman with an apology, and an earliest
request to be present at the wedding.
"Don't for pity's sake, ask any more of the scum," Allen said, adding,
that if she had not invited any of them no one would have been slighted.
"Well, I don't know," Mrs. Browne rejoined, with a sigh; "I can't quite
forget when I was _scum_ myself, and knew how it felt."
On the whole, however, everything went smoothly, and the grand affair
came off one November night when the air was as soft and balmy as in
early summer, and the full moon was sailing through a cloudless sky as
carriage after carriage made its way to the brilliantly lighted house
through the dense crowd of curious people which filled the road in
front, and even stretched to the left along the garden fence. All the
factory hands were there, and all the boys in town, with most of the
young girls, and many of the women whose rank in life was in what Allen
called the scum, forgetting that but for his father's money he might
have been there too.
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