"Yeah?" Sam answered comfortably. "Who else but me knows what you said
to me that time you thought I was mad at you and you were crying out
back of the well-house?"
"Sam!"
"And nobody else knows about that time we were picnicking and a bug got
down the back of your dress and you thought it was a hornet."
"Sam Yoder!" wailed Rosie. "You never told anybody about that!"
"Nope," said Sam truthfully. "I never did. But the me in the week after
next knew. He told me. So he had to be me talking to me. Couldn't've
been anybody else."
Rosie gasped. Sam explained all over again. In detail. When he had
finished, Rosie seemed dazed.
Then she said desperately, "Sam! Either you've t-told somebody else
everything we ever said or did together, or else--there's somebody who
knows every word we ever said to each other! That's awful! Do you really
and truly mean to tell me--"
"Sure I mean to tell you," said Sam happily. "The me in the week after
next called me up and talked about things nobody knows but you and me.
Can't be no doubt at all."
Rosie shivered. "He--he knows every word we ever said! Then he knows
every word we're saying now!" She gulped. "Sam Yoder, you go home!"
Sam gaped at her. She got up and backed away from him.
"D-do you think," she chattered despairingly, "that I--that I'm g-going
to talk to you when s-somebody else--listens to every w-word I say
and--knows everything I do? D-do you think I'm going to _m-marry_ you?"
Then she ran away, weeping noisily, and slammed the door on Sam. Her
father came out presently, looking patient, and asked Sam to go home so
Rosie could finish crying and he could read his newspaper in peace.
* * * * *
On the way back to his own house, Sam meditated darkly. By the time he
got there, he was furious. The him in the week after next could have
warned him about this!
He rang and rang and rang, on the cut-off line with his gadget hooked in
to call July the twelfth. But there was no answer.
When morning came, he rang again, but the phone was still dead. He
loaded his tool-kit in the truck and went off to work, feeling about as
low as a man could feel.
He felt lower when he reported at the office and somebody told him
excitedly that Joe Hunt and the Widow Backus had eloped to North
Carolina to get married. Nobody would have tried to stop them if they
had prosaically gotten married at home, but they had eloped to make it
more romantic.
It wasn't romantic to Sam. It was devastating proof that there was
another him ten days off, knowing everything he knew and more besides,
and very likely laughing his head off at the fix Sam was in. Because,
obviously, Rosie would be still more convinced when she heard this news.
She'd know Sam wasn't crazy or the victim of a practical joke. He had
told the truth.
It wasn't the first time a man got in trouble with a woman by telling
her the truth, but it was new to Sam and it hurt.
He went over to Bradensburg that day to repair some broken lines, and
around noon, he went into a store to get something to eat. There were
some local sportsmen in the store, bragging to each other about what the
Bradensburg baseball team would do to the Dunnsville nine.