"Ho! Is that all?" He laughed and kissed me. "I'll run down and see them about it," he said jauntily.
I smiled again. I had no more idea that anything he could say would—
But I didn't know Jerry—then.
I had not been home from Newport a week when Jerry kept his promise and "ran down." And he had not been there two days before Father and Mother admitted that, perhaps, after all, it would not be so bad an idea if I shouldn't graduate, but should be married instead.
And so I was married.
(Didn't I tell you that Jerry always brought his rings and put them on?)
And again I say, and so we were married.
But what did we know of each other?—the real other? True, we had danced together, been swimming together, dined together, played tennis together. But what did we really know of each other's whims and prejudices, opinions and personal habits and tastes? I knew, to a word, what Jerry would say about a sunset; and he knew, I fancy, what I would say about a dreamy waltz song. But we didn't either of us know what the other would say to a dinnerless home with the cook gone. We were leaving a good deal to be learned later on; but we didn't think of that. Love that is to last must be built upon the realization that troubles and trials and sorrows are sure to come, and that they must be borne together—if one back is not to break under the load. We were entering into a contract, not for a week, but, presumedly, for a lifetime—and a good deal may come to one in a lifetime—not all of it pleasant. We had been brought up in two distinctly different social environments, but we didn't stop to think of that. We liked the same sunsets, and the same make of car, and the same kind of ice-cream; and we looked into each other's eyes and thought we knew the other—whereas we were really only seeing the mirrored reflection of ourselves.
And so we were married.
It was everything that was blissful and delightful, of course, at first. We were still eating the ice-cream and admiring the sunsets. I had forgotten that there were things other than sunsets and ice-cream, I suspect. I was not twenty-one, remember, and my feet fairly ached to dance. The whole world was a show. Music, lights, laughter—how I loved them all!