The Brimming Cup

She drew a long sigh and, closing her eyes, murmured, "I feel as though

I were lifted up on a great rock." After a moment, opening her eyes, she

said, "You are better than I, you know. I'm not at all sure that I could

say that. I never knew before that I was weak. But then I never met

strength before."

"You're not weak," he told her; adding quaintly, "maybe a little

overballasted; with brains and sensitiveness and under-ballasted with

experience, that's all. But you haven't had much chance to take on any

other cargo, as yet."

She was nettled at this, and leaving her slow, wide-winged poise in the

upper airs, she veered and with swallow-like swiftness darted down on

him. "That sounds patronizing and elder-brotherish," she told him. "I've

taken on all sorts of cargo that you don't know anything about. In ever

so many ways you seem positively . . . naïve! You needn't go thinking that

I'm always highstrung and fanciful. I never showed that side to anybody

before, never! Always kept it shut up and locked down and danced and

whooped it up before the door. You know how everybody always thinks of

me as laughing all the time. I do wish everything hadn't been said

already so many times. If it weren't that it's been said so often, I'd

like to say that I have always been laughing to keep from crying."

"Why don't you say it, if that is what you mean?" he proposed.

She looked at him marveling. "I'm so fatuous about you!" she exclaimed;

"the least little thing you say, I see the most wonderful possibilities

in it. I know you'd say what you meant, no matter how many thousands

had said it before. And since I know it's not stupidness in you, why, it

seems to me just splendidly and simply courageous, a kind of courage I'd

never thought of before. I see now, how, after all, those stupid people

had me beaten, because I'd always thought that a person either had to be

stupid so that he didn't know he was saying something everybody else

had said, or else not say it, even if he wanted to, ever so much, and it

was just what he meant."

"Don't you think maybe you're too much bothered about other people,

anyhow?" he suggested, mildly; "whether they're stupid or have said

things or not? What difference does it make, if it's a question of what

you yourself feel? I'd be just as satisfied if you gave all your time

to discovering the wonderful possibilities in what I say. It would give

me a chance to conceal the fact that I get all out of breath trying to

follow what you mean."