THE KATY-DID'S PARTY

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

Miss Katy-did sat on the branch of a flowering azalea, in her best
suit of fine green and silver, with wings of point-lace from Mother
Nature's finest web.

Miss Katy was in the very highest possible spirits, because her
gallant cousin, Colonel Katy-did, had looked in to make her a
morning visit. It was a fine morning, too, which goes for as much
among the Katy-dids as among men and women. It was, in fact, a
morning that Miss Katy thought must have been made on purpose for
her to enjoy herself in. There had been a patter of rain the night
before, which had kept the leaves awake talking to each other till
nearly morning, but by dawn the small winds had blown brisk little
puffs, and whisked the heavens clear and bright with their tiny
wings, as you have seen Susan clear away the cobwebs in your
mamma's parlor; and so now there were only left a thousand
blinking, burning water drops, hanging like convex mirrors at the
end of each leaf, and Miss Katy admired herself in each one.

"Certainly I am a pretty creature," she said to herself; and when
the gallant Colonel said something about being dazzled by her
beauty, she only tossed her head and took it as quite a matter of
course.

"The fact is, my dear Colonel," she said, "I am thinking of giving