Me—a kind of guest housekeeper1 for six months in a beautiful flat in the city—with two young married folks and a little baby to amuse myself with, and the whole world sitting around me, expansive, and waiting for me to enjoy it. It seemed as if the Golden Plan folks always think is going to open up for them had really opened now for me.
How I kept from baking my doughnuts and frying my sponge-cakes in lard, I dunno, but I did—sheer through instinct, I guess. And then I wrote my letter and took it down to the post-office. Go? Wouldn't I go? My letter just said:
"Ellen dear, you ridiculous child, did you think I could wobble for a single second? I'd made up my mind before[Pg 105] I got down the first page. I'll be there Monday night. Do you care if I wear your table-spread for dress-up, when I get there? All I've got is everyday—or not so much so. And for your wanting me, I'll say thank you when I get there.
Calliope."
On my way to mail my letter I came on Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, downtown to get something for supper. And I told them all about it.
Mis' Toplady hunched2 her shawl farther up her back and sighed abundant.
"Ain't that just grand, Calliope?" says she. "To think you're going to do something you ain't been doing all your days."
That was the point, and she knew it.
"I says to Timothy the other night," she went on, "I says, 'Don't you wish I had something to tell you about, or you had something to tell me about, that we both of us didn't know by heart, forward and back?'"
"Eppleby and me, too," says Mis' Holcomb, "I wish to the land we could do something—or be something—that would give a body something to kind of—relate to each other."
"I know," I says. "Husbands and wives is awful simultaneous, I always think."
But I didn't say anything more, being I wasn't married to one; and they didn't say anything more, being they was.
[Pg 106]
Mis' Holcomb waved her cheese at me, cheerful.
"Be gay for us!" says she, and then went home to cook supper for her hungry family.
And so did I, wishing with all my heart that the two of them—that hadn't seen over the rim3 of home in thirty years—could have had my chance.
When I got to the city that night it was raining—rather, it was past raining and on up to pouring. So I got in a taxi to go up to Ellen's—a taxi that was nothing but an automobile4 after all, in spite of its foreign name, ending in a letter that no civilized5 name ought to end in. And never, never, not if I live till after my dying day, will I forget my first look at that living-room of theirs—in the apartment building, as big as a ship, and as lighted up as our church at Christmas-time, which was where Ellen and Russell lived.
A pretty maid let me in. I remember I went in by her with my eyes on her white embroidery6 cap, perked7 up on her head and all ironed up, saucy8 as a blue jay's crest9.
"Excuse me," I says to her over my shoulder, "I've read about them, but yours is the first one I ever saw. My dear, you look like a queen in a new starched10 crown."
She was an awful stiff little thing—'most as stiff as her head-piece. She never smiled.
"What name?" she says, though—and I see she was friendlier than I'd thought.
[Pg 107]
"Why, mine's Calliope Marsh," I says, hearty11. "What's yours?"
She looked so funny—I guess not many paid her much attention.
"Delia," she says. "You're expected," she says, and opened the inside door.
The room was long and soft and wine-colored, with a fire burning in the fireplace, and more lamps than was necessary, but that altogether didn't make much more light than one, only spread it out more. The piano was open, and there was a vase of roses—in Winter! They seemed to have them, I found out later, as casual as if there was a combined wedding and funeral in the house all the time. But they certainly made a beautiful picture.
But all this I sort of took in out of my eyes' four corners, while the rest of me looked at what was before the fire.
A big, low-backed chair was there, as fat and soft as a sofa. And in it was Ellen, in a white dress—in Winter! She wore them, I saw after a while, as casual as if she was at a party, perpetual. But there was something else there in a white dress, too, sitting on her lap, with his pink, bare feet stretched out to the blaze. And he was laughing, and Ellen was, too, at Russell, her husband, sitting on the floor, and aiming his head right at the baby's stomach, to hear him laugh out like—oh, like bluebells12 must be doing in the Spring.
[Pg 108]
"Pretty enough to paint," says I—which was the first they knew I was there.
It was a shame to spoil it, but Ellen and Russell sprang up, and tried to shake hands with me, though I wasn't taking the slightest notice of them. It was the baby I was engaged in. I'd never seen him before. In fact, I'd never seen Ellen and Russell since they were married two years before and went off to Europe, and lived on a peak of the Alps where the baby was born.
They took me to a gray little room that was to be mine, and I put on a fresh lace collar and my cameo pin and my best back comb. And then dinner was ready—a little, round white table with not one living thing on it but lace and roses and glass and silver.
"Why," says I, before I got through with my melon that came first, "why, you two must be perfectly13 happy, ain't you?"
And Ellen says, looking over to him:
"Perfectly, absolutely, radiantly happy. Yes, I am."
And this is what Russell done. He broke his bread, and nodded to both of us promiscuous14, and he says:
"Considerable happier than any decent man has a right to be, I'm thinking."
I noticed that incident particular. And when I look back on it now, I know that that very first [Pg 109]evening I begun noticing other things. I remember the talk went on about like this:
"Ellen," says Russell, "the dog show opened yesterday. They've got some great little pups, I hear. Aren't you going in?"
"Why—I am if you are," says Ellen.
"Nonsense," says Russell, "I can run in any time, but I can't very well meet you there in the middle of the day. You go in yourself."
"Well, I only enjoy it about a third as much to go alone," says she.
"The dogs don't differ when I'm along, you know, lady," says he, smiling.
"You know that isn't what I mean," she says.
And she looked over at him, and smiled at his eyes with her eyes. But I saw that he looked away first, sort of troubled. And I thought:
"Why, she acts as if not enjoying things when he ain't along is a kind of joyful15 sacrifice, that would please any man. I wonder if it does."
It happened two-three times through dinner. She hadn't been over to see some kind of a collection, and couldn't he come home some night early and take her? He couldn't promise—why didn't she go herself and tell him about it?
"You wouldn't have said that three years ago," she says, half fun, half earnest, and waited for him to deny it. But he didn't seem to sense what was expected of him, and he just et on.
[Pg 110]
Ain't it funny how you can sort of see things through the pores of your skin? By the time dinner was over, I knew most as much about those two as if I had lived in the house with them a week.
He was wonderful tender with her, though. I don't mean just in little loverlike ways, saying things and calling her things and looking at her gentle. I mean in ways that don't have to be said or called or looked, but that just are. To my mind they mean a thousand times more. But I thought that in her heart she sort of hankered for the said and called and looked kind. And of course they are nice. Nice, but not vital like the other sort. If you had to get along without one, you know which one would be the one.
When we went into the other room, Ellen took me to look at the baby, in bed, asleep, same as a kitten and a rosebud16 and a little yellow chicken, and all the things that you love even the names of. And when we went back, Ellen went to the piano and begun to play rambley things but low so's you could hardly hear them across the room, on account of the baby. I sank down and was listening, contented17, and thinking of the most thinkable things I knew, when she looked over her shoulder.
"Russell," she says, "if you'll come and turn the music, I'll do that new Serenade."
Russell was on a couch, stretched out with a newspaper and his pipe, and I dunno if I ever seen a man[Pg 111] look more luxurious18. But he got up, sort of a one-joint-at-a-time fashion, and came slumping19 over, with his hair sticking out at the back. He stood and turned the music, with his pipe behind him. And when she'd got through, he says:
"Very pretty, indeed. Now I'll just finish my article, I guess, dear."
He went back to his couch. And she got up, kind of quick, and walked over and stared into the fire. And I got up and went over and stared out the window. It seemed kind of indelicate to be looking, when I knew so well what was happening in that room.
For she'd forgot he was a person. She was thinking that he was just another one of her. And that seems to me a terrible thing for any human being to get to thinking about another, married to them or not though they be.
When I looked out the window, I needed new words. I hadn't realized the elevator had skimmed up so high with me—and done it in the time it would have taken the Emporium elevator, home, to go the two stories. But we were up ten, I found afterward20. And there I was looking the city plain in the face. Rows and rows and fields of little lights from windows that were homes—and homes—and homes. I'd never seen so many homes in my life before, at any one time. And it came over me, as I looked, that in all the hundreds of them I was [Pg 112]looking at, and in the thousands that lay stretched out beyond, the same kind of thing must have gone on at some time or other, or be going to go on, or be going on now, like I saw clear as clear was going on with Ellen and Russell.
It was the third night I was there that the thing happened. I was getting along fine. I did the ordering and the managing and took part care of the baby and mended up clothes and did the dozens of things that Ellen wasn't strong enough to do. Delia and I had got to be real good friends by the second day.
Russell came home that third night looking fagged out. He was never nervous or impatient—I noticed that about him. I'd never once seen him take it out in his conversation with his wife merely because he had had a hard day. We'd just gone in from the dining-room when Russell, instead of lighting21 his pipe and taking his paper, turned round on the rug, and says:
"Dear, I think I'll go over to Beldon's a while to-night."
She was crossing the floor, and I remember how she turned and looked at him.
"Beldon's?" she said. "Have—have you some business?"
"No," Russell says. "He wanted me to come in and have a game of billiards22."
[Pg 113]
"Very well," she says only, and she went and sat down by the fire.
He got into his coat, humming a little under his breath, and then he came over and stooped down and kissed her. She kissed him, but she hardly turned her head. And she didn't turn her head at all as he went out.
When he'd gone and she heard the apartment door shut, Ellen fairly frightened me. She sank down in the big chair where I had first seen her, and put her head on its arm, and cried—cried till her little shoulders shook, and I could hear her sobs23. "Ellen," I says, "what is it?" Though, mind you, I knew well enough.
She put her arms round my neck as I kneeled down beside her. "Oh, Calliope, Calliope!" she says. "It's the end of things."
"End," says I, "of what?"
She looked in my face, with the tears streaming down hers. "Didn't you realize," she says, "that that is the first time my husband ever has left me in the evening—when he didn't have to?"
I saw that I had to be as wise as ten folks and as harmless as none, if I was to help her—and help him. And all at once I felt as if I was ten folks, and as if I'd got to live up to them all.
Because I didn't underestimate the minute. No woman can underestimate that minute when it comes[Pg 114] to any other woman. For out of it there are likely to come down onto her the issues of either life or death; and the worst of it is that, ten to one, she never once sees that it's in her power, maybe, to say whether it shall be life or death that comes.
"What of it?" I says, as calm as if I didn't see anything at all, instead of seeing more than she saw, as I know I did.
She stared at me. "Don't you understand," she says, "what it means?"
"Why, it means," says I, "that he wants a game of billiards, the way any other man does, once in a while."
She shook her head, mournful.
"Three years ago this Winter," says she, "only three short years ago, every minute of the world that Russell had free, he wanted to spend with me. That Winter before we were married, do you suppose that anybody—anybody could have got him to play billiards with him if he could have been with me?"
I thought it over. "Well," I says, "no. Likely not. But then, you see, he couldn't be with you every evening—and that just naturally give him some nights off."
"'Some nights off,'" she says. "Oh, if you think that is the way he looks at it—There is no way in this world that I would rather spend my evenings," she says, "than to sit here with my husband."
"Yes," I says, "I s'pose that's true. I s'pose[Pg 115] that's true of most wives. And it's something they've got to get over thinking is so important."
She gasped24. "Get over—" she says. "Then," says she, "they'll have to get over loving their husbands."
"Oh, dear, no, they won't—no, they won't," says I. "But they'll have to get over thinking that selfishness is love—for one thing. Most folks get them awful mixed—I've noticed that."
But she broke down again, and was sobbing25 on the arm of the chair. "To think," she says over, "that now it'll never, never be the same again. From now on we're going to be just like other married folks!"
That seemed to me a real amazing thing to say, but I saw there wasn't any use talking to her, so I just let her cry till it was time to go and feed the baby. And then she sat nursing him, and breathing long, sobbing breaths—and once I heard her say, "Poor, poor little Mother's boy!" with all the accent on the relationship.
I walked back into the middle of the long, soft, wine-colored room, trying to think if I s'posed I'd got so old that I couldn't help in a thing like this, for I have a notion that there is nothing whatever that gets the matter that you can't help some way if you're in the neighborhood of it.
Delia was just shutting the outside door of the apartment. And she came trotting26 in with her little, formal, front-door air.
[Pg 116]
"Two ladies to see you, Miss Marsh," she says. "Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb."
No sooner said than heard, and I flew to the door, all of a tremble.
"For the land and forevermore," says I. "Where from and what for?"
There they stood in the doorway27, dressed, I see at first glance, in the very best they'd got. Mis' Holcomb, that is the most backward-feeling of any of our women, was a step behind Mis' Toplady, and had hold of her arm. And Mis' Toplady was kind of tiptoeing and looking round cautious, to see if something not named yet was all right.
"There ain't any company, is there?" she says, in a part-whisper.
"No," says I, "not a soul. Come on in."
"Well," says she, relaxing up on her bones, "I asked the girl, and she says she'd see. What's the use of being a hired girl if you don't know who you've let in?"
"Sit down," says I, "and tell me what you're doing here, and why you've come. Is anything the matter? I see there ain't, though—with you in your best clothes. Throw off your things."
"Calliope," says Mis' Holcomb, "you'd never guess." She leaned forward in her chair. "We ain't come up for a single thing," says she, "not a thing!"
Mis' Toplady leaned forward, too. "And the[Pg 117] fare a dollar and ninety-six cents each way," says she, "and us a-staying at a hotel!"
"Go on," says I. "How long you going to be here?"
"Oh, mercy, only to-night," Mis' Holcomb says. "Why, the room is two-fifty just for us to sleep in it. I told him we shouldn't be setting in it a minute, but I guess he didn't believe me."
"Well, go on," says I. "Tell me what you've come for?"
Mis' Toplady leaned back and looked round her and sighed—and anybody could of told that her sigh was pleased and happy.
"Calliope," says she, "we've run away to stay overnight and one day on our chicken money, because we got so dead tired of home."
Mis' Holcomb just giggled28 out.
"It's a fact," she says. "We thought we'd come while you was here, for an excuse. But we were just sick of home, and that's the truth."
I looked at them, stupefied, or part that. Mis' Toplady and Mame, that's been examples of married contentment for thirty years on end, hand-running! It begun to dawn on me, slow, what this meant, as Mis' Toplady begun to tell me about it.
"You know, Calliope," she says, "the very best home in the world gets—"
Then I jumped up. "Hold on," I says. "You wait a minute. I'll be straight back again."
[Pg 118]
I run down the hall to the bedroom where Ellen was. She was just laying the baby down—even in my hurry I stopped to think what a heavenly and eternal picture that makes—a mother laying a baby down. There's something in the stooping of her shoulders and the sweep of her skirt and the tender drooping29 of her face, with the lamp-light on her hair, that makes a picture out of every time a baby is laid in his bed. The very fact that Ellen looked so lovely that way made me all the more anxious to save her.
"Ellen," I says, "come out here, please."
I pulled her along, with her hair all loose and lovely about her face—Ellen was a perfect picture of somebody's wife and a little baby's mother. You never in the world would have thought of her as a human being besides.
So then I introduced them, and I sat down there with them—the two I knew so well, and the one I'd got to know so well so sudden. And two of them were nearly sixty, and one was not much past twenty; but the three of them had so much in common that they were almost like one person sitting there with me, before the fire.
"Now," says I, "Mis' Toplady, go ahead. You needn't mind Ellen. She'll understand."
After a little bit, Mis' Toplady did go ahead.
"Well, sir," Mis' Toplady said, "I dunno what you'll think of us, but this is the way it was. I was[Pg 119] sitting home by the dining-room table with Timothy night before last. We had a real good wood fire in the stove, and a tin of apples baking in the top, that smelled good. And the lamp had been filled that day, so the light was extra bright. And there was a little green wood in the fire that sort of sung—and Timothy set with his shoes off, as he so often does evenings, reading his newspaper and warming his stocking feet on the nickel of the stove. And all of a sudden I looked around at my dining-room, the way I'd looked at it evenings for thirty years or more, ever since we went to housekeeping, and I says to myself, 'I hate the sight of you, and I wish't I was somewheres else.' Not that I do hate it, you know, of course—but it just come over me, like it has before. And as soon as my tin of apples was done and I took them into the kitchen, I grabbed my shawl down off the hook, and run over to Mis' Holcomb's. And when I shut her gate, I near jumped back, because there, poking30 round her garden in the snow in the dark, was Mame!
"So," Mis' Toplady continued, "we hung over the gate and talked about it. And we came to the solemn conclusion that we'd just up and light out for twenty-four hours. We told our husbands, and they took it philosophic31. Men understand a whole lot more than you give them credit for. They know—if they're any real good—that it ain't that you ain't fond of them, or that you ain't thankful you're their[Pg 120] wife, but that you've just got to have things that's different and interesting and—and tellable. Anyhow, that's the way Mame and I figgered it out. And we got into our good clothes, and we came up to the city, and went to the hotel, and got us a bowl of hot oyster32 soup apiece. And then we had the street-car ride out here, and we'll have another going back. And we've seen you. And we'll have a walk past the store windows in the morning before train-time. And I bet when we get home, 'long towards night, our two dining-rooms'll look real good to us again—don't you, Mame?"
"Yes, sir!" Mame says, with her little laugh again. "And our husbands, too!"
I'd been listening to them—but I'd been watching Ellen. Ellen was one of the women that aren't deceived by outside appearances, same as some. Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb didn't look any more like her city friends than a cat's tail looks like a plume33, but just the same Ellen saw what they were and what they were worth. And when they got done:
"Do you mean you are going back to-morrow?" she says.
"Noon train," says Mame, "and be home in time to cook supper as natural as life and as good as new."
Ellen kept looking at them, and I guessed what she was thinking: A hundred miles they'd come for a change, and all they'd got was two street-car rides[Pg 121] and a bowl of oyster soup apiece and this call, and they were going home satisfied.
All of a sudden Ellen sat up straight in her chair.
"See," she says, "it's only eight o'clock. Why can't the four of us go to the theater?"
The two women sort of gasped, in two hitches34.
"Us?" they says.
Ellen jumped up. "Quick, Calliope," she says. "Get your things on. Delia can stay with the baby. I'll telephone for a taxi. We can decide what to see on the way down. You'll go, won't you?" she asks 'em.
"Go!" says they, in one breath. "Oh—yes, sir!"
In no time, or thereabouts, we found ourselves down-stairs packing into the taxicab. I was just as much excited as anybody—I hadn't been to a play in years. Ellen told us what there was as we went down, but they might have been the names of French cooking for all they meant to us, and we left it to her to pick out where we were to go.
When we followed her down the aisle35 of the one she picked out, just after the curtain went up, where do you think she took us? Into a box! It was so dark that Mis' Toplady and Mame never noticed until the curtain went down, and the lights came up, and we looked round.
As for me, I could hardly listen to the play. I was thinking of these two dear women from the village,[Pg 122] and what it meant to them to have something different to do. But even more, I was watching Ellen, that had set out to make them have a good time, and was doing her best at it, getting them to talk and making them laugh, when the curtain was down. But when the curtain was up, it seemed to me that Ellen wasn't listening to the play so very much, either.
Before the last act, Ellen had to get back to the baby, so we left the two of them there and went home.
"Alone in the box!" says Mame Holcomb, as we were leaving. "My land, and my hat's trimmed on the wrong side for the audience!"
"Do we have to go when it's out?" says Mis' Toplady. "Won't they just leave us set here, on—and on—and on?"
I remember them as I looked back and saw them, sitting there together. And something, I dunno whether it was the wedding-trip poplin dress, or the thought of the two dining-rooms where they'd set for so long, or of the little lark36 they'd planned, sort of made a lump come and meet a word I was trying to say.
We'd got out to the entry of the box, when somebody came after us, and it was little bit of Mame Holcomb, looking up with eyes bright as a blue jay's at the feed-dish.
"Oh," she says to Ellen, "I ain't half told you—neither of us has—what this means to us. And I[Pg 123] wanted you to know—we both of us do—that the best part is, you so sort of understood."
Ellen just bent37 over and kissed her. And when we came out in the hall, all light and red carpet, I see Ellen's eyes were full of tears.
And when we got in the taxicab: "Ellen," I says, "I thank you, too—ever so much. You did understand. So did I."
"I don't know—I don't know," she says "But, Calliope, how in the world do you understand that kind of thing?"
So I said it, right out plain:
"Oh," I says, "I guess sheer because I've seen so much unhappiness, and on up to divorce, come about sole because married folks will hunt in couples perpetual, and not let themselves be just folks."
When we got home—and we hadn't said much more all the way there—as we opened the living-room door, I saw that we'd got there first, before Russell. I was glad of that. Ellen ran right down the hall to the baby's room, and I took off my things and went down to the end of the room where the couch was, to lay down till she came back.
I must have dozed38 off, because I didn't hear Russell come in. The first I knew, he was standing39 with his back to the fire, filling his pipe. So I looked in his face, when he didn't know anybody was looking.
He had evidently walked home, and had come in[Pg 124] fresh and glowing and full of frosty air, and his cheeks were ruddy. He was smiling a little at something or other, and altogether he looked not a bit like the tired man that had come home that night to dinner.
Then I heard the farther door click, and Ellen's step in the hall.
He looked toward the door, and I saw the queerest expression come in his face. Now, there was Russell, a man of twenty-seven or eight, a grown man that had lived his independent life for years before he had married Ellen. And yet, honestly, when he looked up then, his face and his eyes were like those of a boy that had done something that he had been scolded for. He looked kind of apologetic and explanatory—a look no man ought to be required to look unless for a real reason. It seems so—ignominious for a human being to have to look like that when they hadn't done a thing wrong.
My heart sank some. I thought of the way Ellen had been all slumped40 down in that easy chair, crying and taking on. And I waited for her to come in, feeling as if all the law and the prophets hung on the next few minutes—and I guess they did.
She'd put on a little, soft house-dress, made you-couldn't-tell-how, of lace, with blue showing through, kind of like clouds and the sky. But it was her face I looked at, because I remembered the set look it had when she'd told Russell good-by. And when I see[Pg 125] her face now there in all that sky-and-clouds effect, honest, it was like a star.
"Hello, dear," she says, kind of sweet and casual, "put a stick of wood on the fire and tell me all about it."
I tell you, my heart jumped up then as much as it would of if I'd heard her say "I will" when they were married. For this was their new minute.
"Sit here," he says, and pulled her down to the big chair, and sat on the low chair beside her, where I'd seen him first. Only now, the baby wasn't there—it was just the two of them.
"Did you beat them all to pieces?" she asks, still with that blessed, casual, natural way of hers.
He smiled, sort of pleased and proud and humble41. "I did," he owns up. "You're my wife, and I can brag42 to you if I want to. I walloped 'em."
He told her about the game, saying a lot of things that didn't mean a thing to me, but that must have meant to her what they meant to him, because she laughed out, pleased.
"Good!" she says. "You play a corking43 game, if I do say it. Do you know, you look a lot better than you did when you came home to dinner? I hate to see you look tired like that."
"I feel fit as a fish now," says he. "There's something about an evening like that with half a dozen of 'em—it isn't the game. It's the—oh, I don't know. But it kind of—"
[Pg 126]
He petered off, and she didn't make the mistake of agreeing too hard or talking about it too long. She just nodded, and pretty soon she told him some little thing about the baby. When he emptied his pipe, she said she thought she'd go to bed.
But when she got up, he reached up and pulled her back in the chair again, and moved so that he set with his cheek against hers. And he says:
"I've got something to tell you."
She picked up his hand to lean her head on, and says, "What? Me?"—which I'd noticed was one of the little family jokes, that no family should be without a set of.
"Do you know, Ellen," he said, "to-night, when I went out to go over to Beldon's, I thought you didn't like my going."
"You did?" she says. "What made you think that?"
"The way you spoke—or looked—or kissed me. I don't know. I imagined it, I guess," says he. "And—I've got something to own up."
She just waited; and he said it out, blunt:
"It made me not want to come home," says he.
"Not want to come home?" she says over, startled.
He nodded. "Lacy and Bright both left Beldon's before I did," he says. "I thought probably—I don't know. I imagined you were going to be[Pg 127] polite as the deuce, the way I thought you were when I went out."
"Oh," she says, "was I that?"
"So when Lacy and Bright made jokes about what their wives'd say if they didn't get home, I joined in with them, and laughed at the 'apron44 strings45.' That's what we called it."
She moved a little away. "Did you do that?" she said. "Oh, Russell, I should hate that. I should think any woman would hate it."
"I know," he says. "I'm dead sorry. But I wanted you to know. And, dear—"
He got up and stood before her, with her hands crushed up in his.
"I want you to know," he says, kind of solemn, "that the way you are about this makes me—gladder than the dickens. Not for the reason you might think—because it's going to make it easy to be away when I want to. But because—"
He didn't say things very easy. Most men don't, except for their little bit of courting time.
"Well, thunder," he said, "don't you see? It makes me so sure you're my wife—and not just married to me."
She smiled up at him without saying anything, but I knew how balm and oil were curing the hurt that she thought she'd had that night when he went out.
"I've always thought of our each doing things[Pg 128]—and coming home and telling each other about them," he says, vague.
"Of my doing things, too?" she asks, quick.
"Why, yes—sure. You, of course," he says, emphatic46. "Haven't you seen that I want you to do things sometimes, without me tagging on?"
"Is that the way you look at it?" she says, slow.
He gave her two hands a gay little jerk, and pulled her to her feet.
"Why," he said, "you're a person. And I'm a person. If we really love each other, being married isn't only something instead. It's something plus."
"Russell," she says, "how did you find that out?"
"I don't know," he says. "How does anybody find out anything?"
I'll never forget the way Ellen looked when she went close to him.
"By loving somebody enough, I think," she says.
That made him stop short to wonder about something.
"How did you find out, if it comes to that?" he asks.
"What? Me?" she says. "Oh, I found out—by special messenger!"
Think of Mis' Toplady and Mame being that, unbeknownst!
They turned away together, and walked down the room. The fire had burned down, and everything[Pg 129] acted like eleven-o'clock-at-night. It made a nice minute. I like to think about it.
"To-morrow morning," she told him, "I'm going to take Calliope and two friends of hers to the dog show. And you—don't—have—to—come. But you're invited, you know."
He laughed like a boy.
"Well, now, maybe I can drop in!" says he.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] Copyright, 1916, Pictorial47 Review.
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1
housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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2
hunched
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| （常指因寒冷、生病或愁苦）耸肩弓身的，伏首前倾的 | |
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3
rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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4
automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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5
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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6
embroidery
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| n.绣花，刺绣；绣制品 | |
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7
perked
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| （使）活跃( perk的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）增值； 使更有趣 | |
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8
saucy
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| adj.无礼的；俊俏的；活泼的 | |
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9
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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10
starched
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| adj.浆硬的，硬挺的，拘泥刻板的v.把（衣服、床单等）浆一浆( starch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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11
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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12
bluebells
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| n.圆叶风铃草( bluebell的名词复数 ) | |
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13
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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14
promiscuous
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| adj.杂乱的，随便的 | |
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15
joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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16
rosebud
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| n.蔷薇花蕾，妙龄少女 | |
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17
contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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18
luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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19
slumping
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| 大幅度下降，暴跌( slump的现在分词 )； 沉重或突然地落下[倒下] | |
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20
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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21
lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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22
billiards
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| n.台球 | |
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23
sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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24
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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25
sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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26
trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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27
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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28
giggled
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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29
drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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30
poking
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| n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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31
philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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32
oyster
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| n.牡蛎；沉默寡言的人 | |
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33
plume
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| n.羽毛；v.整理羽毛，骚首弄姿，用羽毛装饰 | |
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34
hitches
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| 暂时的困难或问题( hitch的名词复数 )； 意外障碍； 急拉； 绳套 | |
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35
aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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36
lark
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| n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏 | |
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37
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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38
dozed
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| v.打盹儿，打瞌睡( doze的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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39
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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40
slumped
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| 大幅度下降，暴跌( slump的过去式和过去分词 )； 沉重或突然地落下[倒下] | |
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41
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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42
brag
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| v./n.吹牛，自夸；adj.第一流的 | |
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43
corking
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| adj.很好的adv.非常地v.用瓶塞塞住( cork的现在分词 ) | |
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44
apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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45
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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46
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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47
pictorial
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| adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报 | |
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