Her good neighbors and friends, even as far as Simpkinsville and Washington, had their little jokes over Mis’ Trimble’s giving her splendor-despising husband a swinging ice-pitcher, but they never knew of the two early trips of the twin pitcher, nor of the midnight comedy in the Trimble home.
But the old man often recalls it, and as he sits in his front hall smoking his silver-mounted pipe, and shaking its ashes into the lava bowl that stands beside the ice-pitcher at his elbow, he sometimes chuckles to himself.
Noticing his shaking shoulders as he sat thus one day his wife turned from the window, where she stood watering her geraniums, and said:
“What on earth are you a-laughin’ at, honey?” (She often calls him “honey” now.)
“How did you know I was a-laughin’?” He looked over his shoulder at her as he spoke.
“Why, I seen yo’ shoulders a-shakin’—that’s how.” And then she added, with a laugh, “An’ now I see yo’ reflection in the side o’ the ice-pitcher, with a zig-zag grin on you a mile long—yo’ smile just happened to strike a iceberg.”
He chuckled again.
“Is that so? Well, the truth is, I’m just sort o’ tickled over things in general, an’ I’m a-settin’ here gigglin’, jest from pure contentment.”
FOOTNOTES:
[4] From “Moriah’s Mourning” by Ruth McEnery Stuart. By permission of Harper & Brothers.