It was a shame to spoil it, but Ellen and Russell sprang up, and tried to shake hands with me, though I wasn't taking the slightest notice of them. It was the baby I was engaged in. I'd never seen him before. In fact, I'd never seen Ellen and Russell since they were married two years before and went off to Europe, and lived on a peak of the Alps where the baby was born.
They took me to a gray little room that was to be mine, and I put on a fresh lace collar and my cameo pin and my best back comb. And then dinner was ready—a little, round white table with not one living thing on it but lace and roses and glass and silver.
"Why," says I, before I got through with my melon that came first, "why, you two must be perfectly happy, ain't you?"
And Ellen says, looking over to him:
"Perfectly, absolutely, radiantly happy. Yes, I am."
And this is what Russell done. He broke his bread, and nodded to both of us promiscuous, and he says:
"Considerable happier than any decent man has a right to be, I'm thinking."
I noticed that incident particular. And when I look back on it now, I know that that very first evening I begun noticing other things. I remember the talk went on about like this:
"Ellen," says Russell, "the dog show opened yesterday. They've got some great little pups, I hear. Aren't you going in?"
"Why—I am if you are," says Ellen.