Oh, Nanny sensed the pitiful, childish loneliness of that plea! The wistfulness of the boy stabbed through her really tender heart. But Nanny Ainslee was a joyous, laughter-loving creature. And the idea of this boy whom already she half loved asking her to be his friend, his sister! Oh, it was childishly funny. How her father would chuckle if he knew that she who had dismissed so many suitors with platonic friendliness and sisterly solicitude was now being offered that same platonic friendliness and brotherly love. It was too much for Nanny's sense of humor!
So Nanny giggled. She giggled disgracefully and could not stop herself,—giggled even though she knew that the tall boy beside her was flushing a painful red and slowly freezing into a hurt and painful silence. But she could not save herself or him.
"You had better let me cut you a few more sprays," he said at last curtly.
She let him lay them in her arms and they walked to church in absolute silence. Nanny never knew that any living man could be so stubbornly silent. She was sorry and she wanted to tell him so. But he gave her no chance. It seemed he was a young man who never asked for things twice. Nanny was sorry but she was also, for some incomprehensible reason, angry. And the sorrier she grew the angrier she became. Cynthia's son seemed not to notice. He walked straight on into the church but Nanny stayed outside and held open court under the big horse chestnuts in front of the church door.
She had left the olive groves and almond groves, the thick roses and the blue waters of Italy, in order to be at home in time to see her native town wrapped up in its fragrant lilac glory.
She stayed out now, her arms full of lilac plumes, watching the little groups of her townspeople coming down the village streets toward the church whose bell was tolling so sweetly through the warm, spring air.
Here came Mrs. Dustin with Peter and Joe Baldwin with his two boys and Colonel Stratton with his sweet-faced wife. From the opposite direction came the Reverend Alexander Campbell with his wife in black silk, his sister in gray silk, his elderly niece in blue silk and his wife's second cousin in lavender. There was Joshua Stillman and his quiet daughter, Uncle Tony and Uncle Tony's brother William, with his four girls and Seth Curtis' wife, Ruth.
Seth never went to church, having a profound scorn for the clergy. But he always fixed things so his wife could go. He said ministers were poor business men, selfish husbands and proverbially poor fathers, from all he'd seen of them. Somehow Seth was a singularly unfortunate man in the matter of seeing things. But there was no denying the fact that he was an unusual husband. He had been caught time and again by his men friends and neighbors on a Sunday morning with one of his wife's aprons tied about him, holding the baby in one arm, while he stirred something on the stove with the other, and in various other ways superintending his household while Ruth was at church. But neither jeers nor sympathy ever upset him.
"No, I can't say that I've ever hankered for sermons much. They don't generally tally with what I've seen and know of life. But Ruth now can get something helpful out of even a fool's remarks and comes home rested and cheerful. I figure that a woman as smart as Ruth about working and saving sure earns her right to a bit of a church on Sunday if she wants it. And furthermore, I aim to give my wife anything in reason that she wants. It doesn't hurt any man to learn from a little personal experience that babies aren't just little blessings full of smiles and dimples but darn little nuisances, let me tell you. This little kid is as good as they make them but he gives me a backache all over, puts bumps on my temper and ties my nerves up in knots. And I've discovered that just watching bread or pies or pudding is work. And when a man's peeled the potatoes and set the table and sliced the bread and filled the water glasses and opened the oven a dozen times and strained and stirred and mashed and salted and peppered, he begins to understand why his wife is so tired after getting a Sunday dinner. And when he thinks of other days, washing days and ironing and baking and scrubbing and sewing days, why, if he's anyway decent he begins to suspect that he's darn lucky to get a full-grown woman to do all that work for just her room and board. And when he stops to count the times she's tied his necktie, darned his socks and patched his clothes, besides giving him a clean bed, a pretty sitting room to live in, children to play with and brag about, and a bank book to make him sleep easy on such nights as the storms are raging outside, why, a man just don't have to go to church to believe in God. He's got proofs enough right in his kitchen. It's the wife who ought to go if it's only to sit still for an hour and get time to tell herself that there is a God and that some day the work will let up maybe and her back won't ache any more and Johnny won't be so hard on his shoes and Sammy on his stockings. Why, I tell you I'm afraid to keep Ruth from church, afraid that if she loses her belief in a married woman's heaven she'll leave me for somebody better or get so discouraged that she'll just hold her breath and die."
So Ruth Curtis went to church every Sunday. And Seth saw to it that she always looked pretty. This particular Lilac Sunday she was wearing the sprigged dimity that Seth bought her over in Spring Road at Williamson's spring sale.