You know how these romances develop. Every summer is saturated with them

the world over. But Bud happened to be a simple-souled fellow, and there

was something about Marie--He didn't know what it was. Men never do

know, until it is all over. He only knew that the drive through the

shady stretches of woodland grew suddenly to seem like little journeys

into paradise. Sentiment lurked behind every great, mossy tree bole. New

beauties unfolded in the winding drive up over the mountain crests. Bud

was terribly in love with the world in those days.

There were the evenings he spent in the Basin, sitting beside Marie

in the huge campfire circle, made wonderful by the shadowy giants,

the redwoods; talking foolishness in undertones while the crowd sang

snatches of songs which no one knew from beginning to end, and that went

very lumpy in the verses and very much out of harmony in the choruses.

Sometimes they would stroll down toward that sweeter music the creek

made, and stand beside one of the enormous trees and watch the glow of

the fire, and the silhouettes of the people gathered around it.

In a week they were surreptitiously holding hands. In two weeks they

could scarcely endure the partings when Bud must start back to San Jose,

and were taxing their ingenuity to invent new reasons why Marie must go

along. In three weeks they were married, and Marie's mother--a shrewd,

shrewish widow--was trying to decide whether she should wash her hands

of Marie, or whether it might be well to accept the situation and hope

that Bud would prove himself a rising young man.

But that was a year in the past. Bud had cabin fever now and did not

know what ailed him, though cause might have been summed up in two meaty

phrases: too much idleness, and too much mother-in-law. Also, not enough

comfort and not enough love.

In the kitchen of the little green cottage on North Sixth Street where

Bud had built the home nest with much nearly-Mission furniture and a

piano, Bud was frying his own hotcakes for his ten o'clock breakfast,

and was scowling over the task. He did not mind the hour so much, but he

did mortally hate to cook his own breakfast--or any other meal, for that

matter. In the next room a rocking chair was rocking with a rhythmic

squeak, and a baby was squalling with that sustained volume of sound

which never fails to fill the adult listener with amazement. It affected

Bud unpleasantly, just as the incessant bawling of a band of weaning

calves used to do. He could not bear the thought of young things going

hungry.

"For the love of Mike, Marie! Why don't you feed that kid, or do

something to shut him up?" he exploded suddenly, dribbling pancake

batter over the untidy range.




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