Free Patterns of Swallows by Connie Cook Page B

start you wouldn't have time to eat, and you were
probably too excited to stop anywhere on the way back. Sit down and
eat. There's plenty, Ruth. You can tell us all the plans for things
while you eat."
    "I don't mind. I have to
tell you, all this marrying business gives me an appetite,"
Graham said, easy and comfortable back in his own home now that the
worst was over. He straddled a chair backwards, a habit he hadn't
outgrown from his teenage years. If he noticed that Ruth wasn't
quite as easy and comfortable, he didn't let on. She took a seat
beside him, sitting gingerly and without leaning all her weight back,
as though the chair might disappear beneath her without warning.
    Graham ate well, and Ruth ate a
little. Graham answered most of the questions with his mouth full.
    Where would they live now? The
farm, of course. It was perfectly adequate for the two of them. For
now, at least. They'd think about a place in town when they had
enough for a down payment and then some. Graham had quite a chunk
saved from working in management at the mill for the past year and
before that, from working part time on all the different lines. (His
father thought it would be good for his only son to know every aspect
of the running of operations intimately the way he, himself, had
learned them: from the ground up.)
    Graham was still on salary.
He'd need to learn more about the managing of the business before he
was made an official partner, his father thought. But his salary was
more than adequate since he'd been living at home and spending all
his spare time with Ruth who had no expensive tastes. Ruth had her
savings, as well. They were better off than most newlyweds, really,
Graham was quick to point out.
    "Will you want to keep
working?" Mrs. MacKellum asked Ruth.
    "I think so," Ruth
said at the same time as Graham said, "Wha'd'ya think? My wife
won't need to work!" They looked at each other, slightly
dismayed. They hadn't discussed it before.
    "Well, I don't know. I
guess we hadn't ..." Ruth hedged, and Graham said nothing
further on the subject.
    But Ruth felt her first doubt.
She hadn't realized it, but she wanted to keep working. She couldn't
imagine life without seeing Jim and Glo and Phoebe and Eva and Sally
and all the regulars on a nearly-daily basis. What would she do at
home all day long while Graham went to the office? The days of
married life as a housewife began to wear a blank, empty look in her
imagination.
    Still, she could see Graham's
point. If she kept working, it would look to the rest of the town as
though she needed to. And that wouldn't sit well with Graham's ego.
Besides, he'd probably want meals on the table at a certain time and
shirts ironed and all the rest. Was she ready for this? She'd
hardly had time to think; it had all happened so fast. This was a
whole different ballgame from just seeing Graham every day and going
places with him.
    But she'd adjust. Of course she
could find plenty to do in running a home. She'd learn to do things
the way Graham liked them done. Her days would fill up. And she'd
make sure she still saw plenty of Jim and Glo and the Morning Glory.
Maybe Graham would let her continue part-time.
    Jim and Glo were next on the
visiting list.
    There were no tears on Glo's
part, just a breath-stealing squeeze for Ruth and a breath-stealing
pounding on the back for Graham. Jim's congratulations were quieter
but just as sincere.
    "You couldn'a found a
better gal to marry if you'd looked for a thousand years," Glo
told Graham in characteristic hyperbolic fashion. (She always
believed her own hyperboles, though.)
    Ruth didn't let it go to her
head. It was the kind of thing people always said to new husbands.
    "You've got yourself a real
treasure there," Jim told Graham in a moment of unusual
expressiveness. "You have to handle her gently. She's just a
fragile, little thing, like a little bird."
    Ruth had never dreamed that Jim
possessed a poetic streak. She wouldn't have been more surprised