"Isn't this fun?" It burst spontaneously from the bride.
"Fun!" Billy flung down an armful of logs, and came to stand beside her, watching the flames. "Lord, Susan," he said, with simple force, "if you only knew how perfect you seem to me! If you only knew how many years I've been thinking how beautiful you were, and how clever, and how far above me-----I"
"Go right on thinking so, darling!" said Susan, practically, escaping from his arm, and taking her place behind the cold chicken. "Do ye feel like ye could eat a little mite, Pa?" asked she.
"Well, I dunno, mebbe I could!" William answered hilariously. "Say, Sue, oughtn't those blankets be out here, airing?" he added suddenly.
"Oh, do let's have dinner first. They make everything look so horrid," said young Mrs. Oliver, composedly carving. "They can dry while we're doing the dishes."
"You know, until we can afford a maid, I'm going to help you every night with the dishes," said Billy.
"Well, don't put on airs about it," Susan said briskly. "Or I'll leave you to do them entirely alone, while I run over the latest songs on the PIARNO. Here now, deary, chew this nicely, and when I've had all I want, perhaps I'll give you some more!"
"Sue, aren't we going to have fun--doing things like this all our lives?"
"I think we are," said Susan demurely. It was strange, it had its terrifying phases, but it was curiously exciting and wonderful, too, this wearing of a man's ring and his name, and being alone with him up here in the great forest.
"This is life--this is all good and right," the new-made wife said to herself, with a flutter at her heart. And across her mind there flitted a fragment of the wedding-prayer, "in shamefacedness grave." "I will be grave," thought Susan. "I will be a good wife, with God's help!"
Again morning found the cabin flooded with sunlight, and for all their happy days there the sun shone, and summer silences made the woods seem like June.
"Billum, if only we didn't have to go back!" said William's wife, seated on a stump, and watching him clean trout for their supper, in the soft close of an afternoon.
"Darling, I love to have you sitting there, with your little feet tucked under you, while I work," said William enthusiastically.