Whereupon, realizing I had made a perfect fool of myself, and that this speech of mine would go the rounds of the suburb, and I could never erase it from the village mind--not if I lived a hundred sensible years, I had much ado to withhold myself from seizing a pot of bachelors' buttons that stood near, and breaking the whole thing over Mrs. Catlin's idiotic skull.
It was on top of this pleasant interview with Mrs. Catlin, that Mr. Chance came over, and asked me to attend a concert that evening with himself and Miss Sprig, and he very narrowly avoided receiving the bachelors' buttons that Mrs. Catlin had but just escaped.
I strode indoors, and began packing some of my effects, for I was resolved to move that day, or the next. Not because I had discovered I had such fools for neighbors--I had always known that--but because I had just discovered that they had a fool for a neighbor.
Worldly considerations prevailed with me, and I took out the Penates that I had slammed into a trunk, mended their broken noses, and set them in place once more; but I hid myself away for several days, much as Moses was hidden, but for a less dignified reason.
After a time, I cooled off, and decided to accept the world as it stood, and not to rage because the millennium did not come before I was fitted to enjoy it.
Mrs. Purblind ran over one afternoon, and I could see that she was far from happy. I had noticed for some weeks various changes in the direction of improvement, in her care of her husband and household. I had also noticed that Mr. Purblind's conduct did not keep pace with these improvements, but I fancied Mrs. Purblind was not sharp enough to see or sensitive enough to care. In this it seems I erred, as I have in one, or perhaps two, other directions during my life.
As Mrs. Purblind, for the first time since I have known her, didn't seem to care to talk, I took up a book at random, and began reading aloud. As luck would have it, I stumbled into some passages descriptive of the ideal home, and before I could stumble out again, the poor woman burst into tears. I suppose that tender little sentence served as the key that unlocked the floodgates. As soon as her grief had spent itself, she apologized, and ascribed her tears to bad news in a letter or something, and shortly afterward left. I watched her walking down the street, until my eyes were too dim to see her. It grieved me sorely that the cause of her sorrow was so deep, and so delicate that I could not offer her my sympathy. Her tears were piteous to me, and I wanted to take her to my heart, and tell her how sorry I was for her; but to do that would have been to take advantage of her moment of weakness, and that I could not--must not do. So I let her go from me with merely a few commonplace expressions of regret that she had received disturbing news, while all the time my heart was aching in unison with hers, and I kept her with me in thought, all day.