The marriage is to take place shortly and Rudd is very busy with the details. He will go on to Washington, of course—of evenings. In fact, the wedding is to be in the evening, so that he won't have to miss any time at the shop. There are so many people coming in every day and asking for shoes, that he wouldn't dare be away.
Martha is insisting on Will's buying a dress soot for the festivities, but he is in doubt about that. Martha, though, shall have the finest dress in the land, for she is more beautiful even than Eric's bride, and she doesn't look a day older than she did when she was a bride herself. A body would never guess how many years ago that was.
The White House is going to be all lit up, and a lot of big folks will be there—a couple of kings, like as not. There will be fried chicken for dinner and ice-cream—mixed, maybe, chocolate and vanella, and p'raps a streak of strawb'ry. And there will be enough so's everybody can have two plates. Marthy will prob'ly bake the cake herself, if she can get that old White House stove to working right.
Rudd has a great surprise in store for her. He's going to tell a good one on Marthy. At just the proper moment he's going to lean over—Lord, he hopes he can keep his face straight—and say, kind of offhand:
"Do you remember, Marthy, the time when you was makin' little baby-clothes for the President of the United States here, and you says to me—you see, Eric, she'd made me quit smokin', herself, but she plumb forgot all about that—and she says to me, s'she, 'Why don't you smoke your pipe any more, Will?' she says. And I says, 'I'd kind o' got out of the habit, Marthy,' s'I, 'but I guess I'll git back in,' s'I. I said it right off like that, 'I guess I'll git back in!' s'I. Remember, Marthy?"
THE HAPPIEST MAN IN IOWAY
Jes' down the road a piece, 'ith dust so deep
It teched the bay mare's fetlocks, an' the sun
So b'ilin' hot, the peewees dassn't peep,
Seemed like midsummer 'fore the spring's begun!
An' me plumb beat an' good-for-nothin'-like
An' awful lonedsome fer a sight o' you ...
I come to that big locus' by the pike,
An' she was all in bloom, an' trembly, too,
With breezes like drug-store perfumery.
I stood up in my sturrups, with my head
So deep in flowers they almost smothered me.
I kind o' liked to think that I was dead ...
An' if I hed 'a' died like that to-day,
I'd 'a' b'en the happiest man in Ioway.
For what's the use't o' goin' on like this?
Your pa not 'lowin' me around the place ...
Well, fust I knowed, I'd give' them blooms a kiss;
They tasted like Good-Night on your white face.
I reached my arms out wide, an' hugged 'em—say,
I dreamp' your little heart was hammerin' me!
I broke this branch off for a love-bo'quet;
'F I'd b'en a giant, I'd 'a' plucked the tree!
The blooms is kind o' dusty from the road,
But you won't mind. So, as the feller said,
"When this you see remember me"—I knowed
Another poem; but I've lost my head
From seein' you! 'Bout all that I kin say
Is—"I'm the happiest man in Ioway."