“Downright scandalous!” I says. “And just on account of those children, too!”
Marthy looked down at her plate, innocent as you please.
“I'm glad we ain't got any children, Hiram,” she says, full of mischief.
That tickled me. I was tickled to see how she was tickled to think she had trapped me.
“I guess it's our bounden duty to hold up the honor of our end of town by showin' it a new silk dress,” I says, and the next thing I knew I was fightin' to keep her from chokin' me to death.
All that evening Marthy was unusual quiet and right happy, too. As she sat on the porch her eyes would wander off over-the-hills-and-far-away, and I knew she was lost in joyous tanglements of bias and gores and plaits, where a man can't foller if he wants to. But when we went inside and had the blinds pulled down she put her arms around my neck again and gave me another choke.
“Dear, dear old Hiram!” she says, and her eyes was tear-wet. “Just think! A new silk dress!” And just then there came into the room the noise of the Marks child—the one with the measles—whimpering.
“Ain't you glad,” says the little woman, “that we haven't any children to spoil all our fun, and bother us?” and when I looked down into that happy little face of hers, I was glad, and no mistake.
The next day was a beauty. It came in like a glory, and we was up almost as soon as the sun was; for we had figgered on one of our regular old-time jolly days by ourselves on the hills—one of the kind that made our end of town call us the “Bride and Groom.” It was our plan to take a good lunch, and just wander. Marthy was to take a book, and I was to take my fishin' tackle, and beyond that was whatever happy thing that turned up.
“If we had children,” she said, “we couldn't go off on these long tramps by ourselves.”