"A car?" he said. "But you're nervous when I drive. Wouldn't you rather
have a horse?"
"Well, but you'd rather have a car," she said. "And I'd like to know you
were liking that best! And, truly, I don't think I'd care much--now."
Then I took a hand. "You look here," I says. "I'd really ought to step
down to Mis' Merriman's to a committee meeting. I've been trying to make
myself believe I didn't need to go, but I know I ought to. And you two
take your drive."
They fussed a little, but that was the way we arranged it. I went off to
my meeting before I saw which they did get to go in. But that didn't
make any difference. All the way to the meeting I kept thinking about
lilacs and hollyhocks and horses and cars. And I saw what had happened
to those two: they loved each other so much that they'd kind of lost
track of the little things that they thought had mattered so much, and
neither could very well remember which they had really had a leaning
towards of all the things.
"It's a kind of _each-otherness_!" I says to myself. "It's a new thing.
That ain't giving-upness. Giving-upness is when you still want what you
give up. This is something else. It's each-otherness. And you can't get
it till you _care_."
But then I thought of something else. It wasn't only them--it was me! It
was like I had caught something from them. For of course I'd rather have
gone driving with those two than to have gone to any committee meeting,
necessary or not. But I knew now that I'd been feeling inside me that of
course they didn't want an old thing like me along, and that of course
they'd rather have their drive alone, horse _or_ automobile. And so I'd
kind of backed out according. Being with them had made me feel a sort of
each-otherness too. It was wonderful. I thought about it a good deal.
And when I came home and see that they'd got back first, and were
sitting on the porch with no lights in the house yet, except the one
burning dim in the hall, I sat upstairs by my window quite a while. And
I says to myself:
"If only there was a bride and groom in every single house all up and
down the streets of the village--"
And I could almost think how it would be with everybody being decent to
each other and to the rest, just sheer because they were all happy.
Picture how I felt, then, when not six weeks later, on a morning all
yellow and blue and green, and tied onto itself with flowers, little
Mrs. Bride came standing at my side door, knocking on the screen, and
her face all tear-stained.
"Gracious, now," I says, "did breakfast burn?"
She came in. She always wore white dresses and little doll caps in the
morning, and she sit down at the end of my dining-room table, looking
like a rosebud in trouble.
"Oh, Miss Marsh," she says, "it isn't any laughing matter. Something's
happened between us. We've spoke cross to each other."
"Well, well," I says, "what was that for?"
I s'posed maybe he'd criticized the popovers, or something equally
universal had occurred.
"_That_ was it," she says. "We've spoke cross to each other, Miss
Marsh."
And then it came to me that it didn't seem to be bothering her at all
what it was about. The only thing that stuck out for her was that they'd
spoke cross to each other.
"So!" I says. "And you've got to wait all day long before you can patch
it up. Why don't you call him up?" I ask her. "It's only twenty cents
for the three minutes--and you can get it all in that."
She shook her head. "That's the worst of it," she says. "I can't do it.
Neither can he. I'm not that sort--to be able to give in after I've been
mad and spoke harsh. I'm--I'm afraid neither of us will, even when he
gets home."
Then I sat up straight. This, I see, was serious--most as serious as
she thought.
"What's the reason?" says I.
"I dunno," she says. "We're like that--both of us. We're awful proud--no
matter how much we want to give in, we can't."