. I figure that a woman as smart as Ruth about
working and saving sure earns her right to a bit of a church on Sunday
if she wants it. And furthermore, I aim to give my wife anything in
reason that she wants. It doesn't hurt any man to learn from a little
personal experience that babies aren't just little blessings full of
smiles and dimples but darn little nuisances, let me tell you. This
little kid is as good as they make them but he gives me a backache all
over, puts bumps on my temper and ties my nerves up in knots. And I've
discovered that just watching bread or pies or pudding is work. And
when a man's peeled the potatoes and set the table and sliced the bread
and filled the water glasses and opened the oven a dozen times and
strained and stirred and mashed and salted and peppered, he begins to
understand why his wife is so tired after getting a Sunday dinner. And
when he thinks of other days, washing days and ironing and baking and
scrubbing and sewing days, why, if he's anyway decent he begins to
suspect that he's darn lucky to get a full-grown woman to do all that
work for just her room and board. And when he stops to count the times
she's tied his necktie, darned his socks and patched his clothes,
besides giving him a clean bed, a pretty sitting room to live in,
children to play with and brag about, and a bank book to make him sleep
easy on such nights as the storms are raging outside, why, a man just
don't have to go to church to believe in God. He's got proofs enough
right in his kitchen. It's the wife who ought to go if it's only to
sit still for an hour and get time to tell herself that there is a God
and that some day the work will let up maybe and her back won't ache
any more and Johnny won't be so hard on his shoes and Sammy on his
stockings. Why, I tell you I'm afraid to keep Ruth from church, afraid
that if she loses her belief in a married woman's heaven she'll leave
me for somebody better or get so discouraged that she'll just hold her
breath and die."

So Ruth Curtis went to church every Sunday. And Seth saw to it that
she always looked pretty. This particular Lilac Sunday she was wearing
the sprigged dimity that Seth bought her over in Spring Road at
Williamson's spring sale.

Softly the bell tolled and the last stragglers came hurrying leisurely,
every soul carrying the lovely fragrant plumes so that the church would
be sweet with the breath of spring. Later, these armfuls of beaut