And then would come another happy day, like and yet unlike to yesterday.
No one called, you see. But I do not think Psyche cared for that. She always hated to make calls, nor did she want much to receive them. Both she and Edward were alone fully half their lives, though sometimes he would call her into the study to work with him, and often he would come to her to work with her. He would ask her if she was lonely, and he planned visits from his sisters, who were very nice girls, and his mother, who was perfectly lovely, and after a while, from some of the Western girls whom Psyche had known at the Ingham University. But never, by any accident, did any visitor come who made any allusion to his daily business. He never spoke of it to Psyche, and she, dear child, thought of it much less than you would think. She had promised not to ask, and she had sense to learn that the best way not to ask was not to care. Yes, Versatilla, dear,--and a girl of principle who determines not to care will not care. She knows how to will and to do.
I do not know whether Psyche the more enjoyed the opera or the pictures which she and Edward saw together. There seemed to her to be no nice private house in Boston where dear Edward did not seem welcome when he sent in his card, and asked if he and Mrs. Ross might see the pictures. Psyche often said that she owned more Corots and Calames, more Daubignys and Merles and Millets and Bonnats than any lady in the land, and that she kept them in more galleries. At the opera they often found pleasant people whom Edward knew sitting next to them, and they always chided him that he was such a stranger; and he always introduced Psyche to them as his wife as proudly as a king; and with many of these people she talked pleasantly, and some of them she met and bowed to at church or as they were driving. But none of them ever called upon her, nor did she call upon them. One day she said to Edward that she believed he knew more people than anybody else in the world. And he said, with a sad sigh, "I am afraid I do"; and she saw that it worried him, and so the dear child said no more.
In all this happy time Psyche had had no visit from her own sisters. Perhaps that was one reason why it was so happy. But it happened, after a happy life of a year and more, that a darling baby boy came to Psyche to make her wonder how she could have thought her life before was life at all. And the birth of the boy and his wonderful gifts were duly reported in the letters to Painted Post, and then there came quite a hard letter from Priscilla, putting in form the complaint that neither of the sisters had ever been asked to make Psyche a visit since they were married.