"That doesn't make any sense."

"Corinne. Please. Stay out of it. Don't try to find out if it makes sense."

CORINNE and Ford were married on April 20, 1937 (about four months after they had met as adults), in the chapel at Columbia. Corinne's matron-of-honor was Ginnie Fowler, and Dr. Funk, of the English Department, stood up for Ford. About sixty of Corinne's friends came to the wedding.

Only two people besides Funk came expressly to watch Ford get married: his publisher, Rayburn Clapp and a very tall, very pale man, an instructor of Elizabethan Literature at Columbia, who remarked at least three times that the flowers bothered his "nasal passages."

Dr. Funk canceled Ford's lectures for ten days, insisting that Ford and Corinne take a short honeymoon.

They drove to Canada, in Corinne's car They returned to New York, to Corinne's apartment, on the first Sunday in May. I know nothing at all about their honeymoon.

That's a statement, not an apology, I'd like to point out. If I had really needed the facts I probably could have got them.

The Monday morning following their return to New York, Corinne got a letter in the first mail. which she considered rather touching. It read as follows: 32 MacReady Road Harkins, Vermont April 30, 1937 Dear Mrs. Ford, I saw last week in the Sunday edition of the New York Times that you and Mr. Ford were married, and I am taking the liberty of writing to you, hoping that Columbia will know your home address and forward this letter accordingly.

I have read Mr. Ford's new book of poems, "Man on a Carousel," and feel that I must somehow ask him for advice. But rather than risk disturbing him at his work I am writing first to you.

I am twenty and a junior at Creedmore College here in Harkins. My parents are dead, and since early childhood I have lived with my aunt in what is probably the oldest, largest and ugliest house in America.

To be as brief as possible, I have written some poems that I would very much like Mr. Ford to see, and I am enclosing them. I beg you to show them to him, as I feel I need his advice so badly. I know I haven't the right to ask Mr. Ford to sit down and write me a letter of detailed criticism, but if he could possibly just read or even look through my poems, that would be enough. You see, our spring vacation begins next Friday, and my aunt and I are coming to New York City next Saturday, May eighth. on the way to attend my cousin's wedding in Newport. I could very easily speak to you on the telephone about the poems.

I shall be everlastingly grateful to you both for any kind of guidance, and may I, at this time wish you both all happiness for your married life?

Yours sincerely.

Mary Gates Croft

The letter came in a huge manila envelope. Enclosed with it was a heavy sheaf of yellow first-draft paper folded into overly compact eighths.

Unlike the letter. which had been typewritten, the verses were written in hard lead pencil and were cramped together unprovocatively. The bride scarcely glanced at them ---they looked too untidy to go nicely with her morning orange juice. However, she pushed verses, letter and envelope--the whole business--across the breakfast table toward the groom.

If it were said now that Corinne pushed the verses over to Ford because she had been touched by the young-sounding appeal of the letter and because she wanted her qualified, brand-new husband to meet the appeal, the greatest part of the truth would be told. But the truth in its entirety seldom comes in one big neat peace. She had another reason. Ford was eating his corn flakes without cream or sugar. Absolutely dry and unsweetened.

Corinne wanted a legitimate excuse to make him look up so that she could suggest, preferably in a casual voice, that he try eating his corn flakes with cream and sugar.

"Darling," she said.

The groom looked up politely from his dry corn flakes and his lecture notes.

"If you have time today, would you read this?"

Corinne felt like hearing her own voice in the quiet breakfast room. She went into details: "It's a letter and Some poems from a college girl in Vermont. The letter's sweet. You can see she spent hours and hours writing it. Anyway if you can possibly decipher her handwriting and can read the verses, you're to make some comment to me . . ." As she looked at her new husband's handsome, Monday-morning-go-to-work-for-the-first-time face her trend of thought drifted away from her. She reached across the table, stroked his hand, and finished weakly, "She's coming to New York and plans to phone me for your criticism. All very complicated."

Ford nodded. "Be glad to," he said, and stuffed the letter and verses into his jacket pocket.

But it was a much too simple and final reply. Corinne wanted to draw him closer, physically and otherwise, to her. She wanted the oblique shafts of breakfast table sunshine to fall on them together, not singly, not one at a time.

"Wait a minute, darling. Just give me her address for a second. I'll drop her a line and ask her to tea Sunday."

"All right. Fine." Ford handed over the envelope, smiled, and finished his corn flakes.

But as late as the following Sunday noon Ford still hadn't read the verses. Corinne finally rapped on his door.

"Ray. Darling. That girl I wrote to is coming here in a couple of hours," she said gently. "Do you think you could just glance through her verses? Just so you can say a few words to her?"

"Sure! I was just looking at some things here. Where are they?"

"You have them, darling. They're probably still in the coat of your blue suit."

"I'll get dressed and look at them right away," he said efficiently.

But he stayed at his desk, working, until at three o'clock the front doorbell rang.

Corinne rushed back to his study. "Darling, have you read them?"

"Is she here already?" Ford asked in credulously.

"I'll entertain her. You read. Come out when you're finished." Corinne closed the door hurriedly. Rita, the maid, had already answered the doorbell.

"How do you do, Miss Croft," Corinne said--all hostess--moving forward toward her guest in the living room.

She was addressing a slight, fair-haired girl with a receding chin. who might almost have passed for eighteen instead of twenty. She was hatless and wearing a good gray flannel suit--very new.

"It's awfully nice of you to let me come, Mrs. Ford."

"Won't you sit down? I'm afraid my husband will be a little late."

Both women sat down, Miss Croft saying, "I think I'll recognize him. I saw his picture in 'Poetry Survey.' Wasn't it a wonderful picture? I never saw anyone so handsome." Her voice wasn't giddy but it had in it all the reputed frankness of youth. She looked at her hostess enthusiastically.

Corinne laughed. "I never did either," she said. "How do you like New York, Miss Croft?"

Corinne sat with her guest for an hour and a half without an appearance of Ford.

Conversation was not difficult, however. On the contrary. Miss Croft seemed to have arrived forewarned of the deadly platitudes usually exchanged between out-of-towners and resident New Yorkers. It seemed she had brought her own fresh dialogue. She confessed to Corinne, to begin with, that she liked New York, but only to live here, not to visit. Corinne was genuinely amused--as had been intended--and began to feel sorry for her guest's little receding chin and to notice that her calves and ankles were really quite nice.

"I'm trying," Miss Croft suddenly confided, a little glumly, "to persuade my aunt to let me stay on in New York to study. I don't have much hope, though. Especially after last night. A drunken man came into the dining room at the hotel." She grinned. "I'm not even allowed to wear lipstick."

Corinne leaned forward on an impulse. "Look. Would you really like to stay and study?"

"More than anything else in the world, I guess."

"What about Creedmore? You'd want to finish there, wouldn't you?"

"I could go to Barnard. Then I could study at Columbia in the evening,"

Miss Croft said readily.

"Do you think it would help if I spoke with your aunt? I mean, an older woman? I'd be very glad to, if it's what you really want," Corinne offered with characteristic kindness.

"Oh, golly, that's awfully nice!" said Miss Croft. But she shook her head immediately. "But, thanks. I think I'd better fight it out alone for the few more days we're here. You couldn't help anyway, I'm afraid. You don't know Aunt Cornelia." She looked down self-consciously at her hands. "I've never really been away from home. I live in a way that---" She broke off with a smile Corinne found extremely winning. "What's the difference? I'm really very grateful to be here at all."

Corinne asked quietly, "Where are you staying, dear?"

"At the Waldorf. I think we're going back next Sunday." Miss Croft giggled. "Aunt Cornelia doesn't trust the servants with the silver.

Especially the 'new' cook --she's only been with us nine years and hasn't really proved herself."

Corinne laughed--really laughed. She suddenly disapproved the possibility of this bright small person going back to Vermont with all or surely most of her challenges unmet.

"Mary-may I call you Mary?" Corinne began.

"Bunny. Nobody calls me Mary."

"Bunny, you're perfectly welcome to stay here for a while after your aunt leaves. If shell let you. Really. We have a lovely room that we don't even---"

Emotionally, Bunny Croft pressed Corinne's hand. Then she placed both her hands into the side pockets of her suit Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick.

"I'll work out something," she said with confidence, and smiled.

Apparently it was not her nature ,to be hopelessly depressed by adverse circumstances. With considerable tea-table enterprise she began, verbally, to conduct Corinne around her home in Vermont, pointing out with mixed affection and abhorrence things that had stood or greenly stretched or lay unrepaired all through her childhood. Aunt Cornelia came into focus: a funny, humorless spinster who evidently was carrying on a private war on many fronts, chiefly against progress and dust and fun. Corinne listened attentively, sometimes laughing out loud, sometimes vicariously oppressed, shaking her head.

But it was when the servants began to move through the house that Corinne was most personally moved. As Bunny began to speak tenderly and inclusively of an old butler named Harry, who had built kites for her to sail high above her unquestionably gray childhood, whom she had unqualifiedly loved and depended upon. Corinne was acutely, almost painfully reminded of Eric, her father's old chauffeur, so long dead.

"And Ernestine!" Bunny exclaimed with great warmth. "Golly, I wish you could meet Ernestine. She's Aunt Cornelia's maid. She's a terrible kleptomaniac," she fondly classified. "Has been ever since I can remember.

But when I first came to Aunt Cornelia's, Ernestine was the only one in the house-- except Harry--who had any idea that a little girl-wasn't just a young, short adult." She giggled. A gleam of real mischief came into her eyes--her eyes were very pretty: graygreen and quite large. "For years I confessed to all kinds of petty thefts around the house. I still do. Golly, Aunt Cornelia would discharge Ernestine in a minute if she knew about her--her 'trouble.'" She grinned.

"What did your aunt do--I mean when you were a child--when you took the blame for Ernestine?" Corinne asked, amused and interested. Interested in, and somewhat envious of, the apparent resourcefulness by which her guest (apparently unscathed) had passed through her childhood.

"What would she do?" Bunny shrugged her shoulders--a gesture curiously immature for her age, Corinne thought. Bunny grinned. "She wouldn't do much about it. Forbid me the use of the library. Ernestine would get the key for me anyway. Or tell me I couldn't ride in the horse show. Something like that."

Corinne looked at her wrist watch suddenly. "Ray should be here," she apologized. "I'm awfully sorry he's so late."

"Sorry!" Bunny looked shocked. "Golly. Mrs. Ford. To think that he'd--I mean. that he'd find time to see me at all . . ." Self-consciously she scratched her frail wrist, but asked, "Has he had a chance at all to look at my poems? I mean, has he had time at all?"

"Well, so far as I know---" Corinne started to stall. but turned in her chair gratefully, as she heard the double doors to the living room open.

"Ray! Finally. Come in, darling."

Corinne attended to the introductions. Bunny Croft was visibly flustered.

"Sit down, darling," the bride addressed the groom. "You look a little dragged. Have some tea."

Ford sat down on the chair between the two women, pushed it back a little, and immediately asked, "Have you tried to have published any of these poems you have written, Miss Croft?"

Involuntarily Corinne arched her back a little. Her husband's question was ice-cold.

"Well, no, Mr. Ford. I didn't think they were -no, I haven't," Bunny Croft said.

"May I ask why you sent them to me?"

"Well, golly, Mr. Ford--I don't know. I just thought--well, I thought I ought to find out whether I'm any good or not . . . I don't know." Bunny's eyes flashed Corinne an appeal for help.

"Darling, have some tea," Corinne suggested, confused. Her husband had not come into the room altogether intact. He had brought his handsome head. And probably all of his genius. But where was his kindness?

"No tea, Corinne, thank you," Ford declined, looking a little naked without his kindness.

Corinne handed Bunny Croft a fresh cup of tea, and looked at her husband evenly. "Are the poems interesting, darling?" she asked.

"How do you mean, interesting?"

Corinne carefully put cream in her own tea "Well, I mean are they lovely?"

"Are your poems lovely, Miss Croft?" Ford asked.

"Well, I--I hope so, Mr. Ford---"

"No, you don't," Ford contradicted quietly. "Don't say that."

"Ray," Corinne said, upset. "What's the matter, darling?"

But Ford was looking at Bunny Croft. "Don't say that," he said to her again.

"Gol-lee, Mr. Ford. If my poems aren't --well, at all lovely--I don't know what they are. I mean--golly!" Bunny Croft flushed and put her hands into her jacket pocket, out of sight.

Ford abruptly stood up. He looked down at Corinne. "I have to go, Corinne.

I'll be back in an hour."

"Go?" Corinne said.

"I promised Dr. Funk I'd drop by if we got back today."

It was a lie, however unelaborate. It waylaid deftly any oral response from Corinne. She looked up at her husband and just nodded. Ford turned to Bunny Croft, saying, "Good-by," and sounding curiously logical.

The groom bent over and kissed the bride, who immediately got her voice back. "Darling. If you could just give Miss Croft a little constructive criticism that might . . ."

"Oh, no!" Bunny Croft protested. "Please. It isn't--I mean it isn't at all necessary--really!"

Ford, who had caught a head cold during the drive back from Canada, used his handkerchief. He replaced it, saying slowly, "Miss Croft, I've read every one of the poems you sent to me. I can't tell you you're a poet.