While Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb prepare breakfast, Howie Newsome delivers milk. Si Crowell, Joe Crowell's younger brother, appears with the morning paper. Si worries that Grover's Corners is losing its best baseball pitcher — George Gibbs. Si doesn't understand how George can give up baseball just to get married. Constable Warren enters to check the drain pipes. There has been heavy rainfall; he fears flooding. Howie thinks the weather will clear up.
Mrs. Gibbs orders extra milk and cream because she expects a houseful of relatives. Across the street, Mrs. Webb also orders more milk and cream than usual. Howie expresses confidence that the newlyweds will be happy. Both women urge Howie and his wife to come to the wedding.
Doc Gibbs appears and comments to his wife that she is losing one of her chicks. Mrs. Gibbs feels like crying and insists that George and Emily are too young for marriage. Doc Gibbs reminds her of their own wedding day and his fear of matrimony. Mrs. Gibbs concludes that the natural order of human relationships is "two by two " He continues his reminiscence of how he worried that they would run out of things to talk about and have to eat in silence. But for twenty years, he muses, they have had plenty of topics to discuss.
George comes down for breakfast and nervously jokes about losing his freedom, which he symbolizes by pretending to cut his own throat. He starts across the yard to see Emily, but his mother, mindful of her role as chief worrier, makes him come back and put on his overshoes.
