“I am doing my duty,” she said, firmly. “I have done nothing for which the law can punish me. If a young lady comes willingly into my car for a ride, as you did”—she turned sharply to Myrtle—“and if a young fool chooses to sit in my front yard instead of registering to serve his country, it is not my fault. As a matter of fact, I can probably have him arrested for trespass.”
As I have said, the farmhouse is still furnished with Tish’s mother’s things. She was a Biggs, and all the things the Biggses had not wanted for sixty years were in the house. So at least we had chairs to sit on, and if we had only had water, for we were all thirsty from excitement and dust, we could have been fairly comfortable, although Myrtle complained bitterly of thirst.
“And I want to wash,” she said fretfully. “If I could wash I’d change my blouse and look like something.”
“For whom?” Tish demanded. “For that slacker outside?”
Suddenly Myrtle laughed. She had been in tears for so long that it surprised us. We all stared at her, but she seemed to get worse and worse.
“She’s hysterical, poor child,” Aggie said, feeling for her smelling salts. “I don’t know that I blame her, Tish. No one knows better than I do what it is to expect to be married, and then find the divine hand of Providence intervening.”
But Myrtle suddenly walked over to Aggie and, stooping, kissed her on the top of her right ear.
“You dear thing!” she said. “I still don’t get all the idea, but I don’t much care if I don’t. I haven’t had so much excitement since I ran away from boarding school.”
She then straightened and looked at Tish. It was clear that her feeling for dear Tish was still vague, but was rather more of respect than of love.
“As for the—the young man outside,” she said, “I seem to gather that he hasn’t registered, and that I am not to marry him until he has. Very well. I hadn’t thought about it before, but that speech of yours—suppose you tell him that I won’t marry him until he has a—a magic blue card. I should like to see his face.”