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"Through storm and sunshine, she was always there at her post, aiding, encouraging, that I might be helped," the Honorable Jonas Whitermore was saying. "Week in and week out she fought poverty, sickness, and disappointments, and all without a murmur, lest her complaints distract me for one precious moment from my work.
"Yes, I knew her," nodded my neighbor, "and she didn't look much then like she does now. She was as pretty as a picture and there wa'n't a chap within sight of her what wa'n't head over heels in love with her. But there wa'n't never a chance for but two of us and we knew it: Joe Whitermore and a chap named Fred Farrell.
"Mary said she could see it plagued her and she wa'n't surprised when, after a time, Betty begun to have headaches and be sick party nights, and beg Mr. Whitermore to go alone and then cry because he did go alone. You see, she'd got it into her head then that her husband was ashamed of her." "And was he?" demanded I. "I don't know. Mary said she couldn't tell exactly.
The little woman plainly had forgotten us. She was no longer Mrs. Jonas Whitermore among a crowd of strangers listening to a great man's Old-Home-Day speech. She was just a loving, heart-hungry, tired, all-but-discouraged wife hearing for the first time from the lips of her husband that he knew and cared and understood.
The tender glow on her face had grown and deepened and broadened until her whole little brown-clad self seemed transfigured. My own eyes dimmed as I looked. Then, suddenly I became aware that the Honorable Jonas Whitermore was speaking again.
So, after a time, we just sort of stood off and watched the race as pretty a race as ever you see. Farrell had the money and the good looks, while Whitermore was poor as a church mouse, and he was homely, too. But Whitermore must have had somethin' maybe somethin' we didn't see, for she took <i>him</i>. "Well, they married and settled down happy as two twitterin' birds, but poor as Job's turkey.
Whitermore said he didn't want his wife to work so hard now, and that, besides, his position demanded it. He was always talkin' about his position those days, tryin' to get his wife to go callin' and go to parties and take her place as his wife, as he put it. "And Mary said Betty did try, and try hard. Of course she had nice clo's now, lots of 'em; but somehow they never seemed to look just right.
When they went they took my oldest girl, Mary, to help Betty; and so we still kept track of 'em. Mary said it was worse than ever in the new place. It was quite a big city and just livin' cost a lot. Mr. Whitermore, of course, had to look decent, out among folks as he was, so he had to be 'tended to first. Then what was left of money and time went to the children.
From somewhere had come the rumor that the man who was to introduce the Honorable Jonas Whitermore had been delayed by a washout "down the road," but was now speeding toward us by automobile. For my part, I fear I wished the absentee a punctured tire so that I might hear more of the heart-history of the faded little woman with the bonnet askew.
But maybe you didn't hear what she said," he hazarded, with a jerk of his thumb toward the young woman in front. "About Mrs. Whitermore? Yes, I heard." His face darkened. "Then you know. And she heard, too! 'Ordinary woman, indeed! Humph! To think that Betty Tillington should ever live to hear herself called an 'ordinary woman'! You see, I knew her when she <i>was</i> Betty Tillington."
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