"I know," I says. "Husbands and wives is awful simultaneous, I always think."
But I didn't say anything more, being I wasn't married to one; and they didn't say anything more, being they was.
Mis' Holcomb waved her cheese at me, cheerful.
"Be gay for us!" says she, and then went home to cook supper for her hungry family.
And so did I, wishing with all my heart that the two of them—that hadn't seen over the rim of home in thirty years—could have had my chance.
When I got to the city that night it was raining—rather, it was past raining and on up to pouring. So I got in a taxi to go up to Ellen's—a taxi that was nothing but an automobile after all, in spite of its foreign name, ending in a letter that no civilized name ought to end in. And never, never, not if I live till after my dying day, will I forget my first look at that living-room of theirs—in the apartment building, as big as a ship, and as lighted up as our church at Christmas-time, which was where Ellen and Russell lived.
A pretty maid let me in. I remember I went in by her with my eyes on her white embroidery cap, perked up on her head and all ironed up, saucy as a blue jay's crest.
"Excuse me," I says to her over my shoulder, "I've read about them, but yours is the first one I ever saw. My dear, you look like a queen in a new starched crown."
She was an awful stiff little thing—'most as stiff as her head-piece. She never smiled.