“Isn’t it strange for me to be talking this way now!” she said presently. “Another proof that I’m getting old. But the date brings it very close; it seems, somehow, closer than ever this year.—Monty, weren’t you tremendously surprised when I married Tom Dandridge?”
“I certainly was.”
“I’ll tell you a secret. I was, too. I suppose I did it because of a sneaking feeling that some people were feeling sorry for me, which I never could stand. Well, he was a man any one might honor. I’ve always thought a woman ought to have two husbands: one to love and cherish, and the other to honor and obey. I had the latter, at any rate.”
“And you’ve lived, Judith,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed, with a little sigh, “I’ve lived. I’ve had Shirley, and she’s twenty and adorable. Some of my emotions creak a bit in the hinges, but I’ve enjoyed things. A woman is cat enough not to be wholly miserable if she can sit in the sun and purr. And I’ve had people enough, and books to read, and plenty of pretty things to look at, and old lace to wear, and I’ve kept my figure and my vanity—I’m not too old yet to thank the Lord for that! So don’t talk to me about worsted shawls and horrible arctics. For I won’t wear ’em. Not if I know myself! Here comes Shirley. She’s made two juleps, and if you’re a gentleman, you’ll distract her attention till I’ve got rid of mine in my usual way.”
The major, at the foot of the cherry-bordered lane, looked back across the box-hedge to where the two figures sat under the rose-arbor, the mother’s face turned lovingly down to Shirley’s at her knee. He stood a moment watching them from under his slouched hat-brim.
“You never looked at me that way, Judith, did you!” he sighed to himself. “It’s been a long time, too, since I began to want you to—’most forty years. When it came to the show-down, I wasn’t even as fit as Tom Dandridge!”
He pulled his hat down farther over his big brow and sighed again as he strode on. “You just couldn’t make yourself care, could you! People can’t, maybe. And I reckon you were right about it. I wasn’t fit.”