he women in a sociable way. She joined a sewing circle which
met twice a month chiefly I guess for the purpose of finding out about
one another's husbands. At any rate she told me more about them than I
would have learned in ten years.

Still, during the fall and winter we kept pretty much by ourselves,
not deliberately but because neither of us cared particularly about
whist parties and such things but preferred to spend together what
time we had. And then I guess Ruth was a little shy about her clothes.
She dressed mighty well to my eye but she made most of her things
herself and didn't care much about style. She didn't notice the
difference at home but when she was out among others, they made her
feel it. However spring came around again and we forgot all about
those details. We didn't go in town so much that summer and used to
spend more time on our piazza. I saw more of the men in this way and
found them a pleasant, companionable lot. They asked me to join the
Neighborhood Club and I did, more to meet them half way than because I
wanted to. There we played billiards and discussed the stock market
and furnaces. All of them had schemes for making fortunes if only they
had a few thousand dollars capital. Now and then you'd find a group of
them in one corner discussing a rumor that so and so had lost his job.
They spoke of this as they would of a death. But none of those
subjects interested me especially in view of what I was looking
forward to in my own family.

In the afternoons of the early fall the women sent over jellies and
such stuff to Ruth and dropped in upon her with whispered advice. She
used to repeat it to me at night with a gay little laugh and her eyes
sparkling like diamonds. She was happier now than I had ever seen her
and so was I myself. When I went in town in the morning I felt very
important.

I thought I had touched the climax of life when I married Ruth but
when the boy came he lifted me a notch higher. And with him he brought
me a new wife in Ruth, without taking one whit from the old.
Sweetheart, wife and mother now, she revealed to me new depths of
womanhood.

She taught me, too, what real courage is. I was the coward when the
time came. I had taken a day off but the doctor ordered me out of the
house. I went down to the club and I felt more one of the neighborhood
that day than I ever did before or afterwards. It was Saturday and
during the afternoon a number of the men came in and just