"Oh, Martin," she pressed her lips upon his bandaged head, her eyes were glowing with that "light that never was on land or sea"--"Oh, Martin, I've loved _you_ ever since that day you saved my life by throwing me into the bean-patch and then kissed my burnt hand."

"Not your hand this time, sweetheart," he whispered, "your lips!"

"I'm glad," Amanda said after they had told each other the old, old story, "I'm so glad I kept my castles in Spain. When you went away and didn't write I almost wrecked them purposely. I thought they'd go tumbling into ashes but somehow I braced them up again. Now they're more beautiful than ever. I pity the people who own no castles in Spain, who have no dreams that won't come true exactly as they dreamed.

I'll hold on to my dreams even if I know they can never come true exactly as I dream them. I wouldn't give up my castles in Spain. I'll have them till I die. But, Martin, that automobile might have killed you!"

"Nonsense. I'm just scratched a bit. I'll be out of this in no time."

"That rascal of a Lyman--you thought I could marry him?"

"I couldn't believe it, yet he said so. Some liar, isn't he?"

"Yes, but not quite so black as you thought. He is going to marry a girl named Amanda, one from his college town, and they are going to live in California."

"Good riddance!"

"Yes. The engagement was announced last week while you were away. He knew you had probably not heard of it and saw a chance to make you jealous."

"I'd like to wring his neck," said Martin, grinning. "But since it turned out like this for me I'll forgive him. I don't care how many Amandas he marries if he leaves me mine."

At that point little Charlie, tiptoeing to the open door of Martin's room, saw something which caused him to widen his eyes, clap a hand over his mouth to smother an exclamation, and turn quickly down the stairs.

"Jiminy pats, Mom!" he cried excitedly as he entered the kitchen, "our Mart's holdin' Amanda's hand and she's kissin' him on the face! I seen it and heard it! Jiminy pats!"

The small boy wondered what ailed his mother, why she was not properly shocked. Why did she gather him into her arms and whisper something that sounded exactly like, "Thank G.o.d!"

"It's all right," she told him. "You mustn't tell; that's their secret."

"Oh, is it all right? Then I won't tell. Mart says I can keep a secret good."

But Martin and Amanda decided to take the mother into the happy secret.

"Look at my face," the girl said. "I can't hide my happiness. We might as well tell it."

"Mother!" Martin's voice rang through the house. At the sound a happy, white-capped woman wiped her eyes again on the corner of her gingham ap.r.o.n and mounted the stairs to give her blessing to her boy and the girl who had crowned him with her woman's love.

The announcement of the troth was received with gladness at the Reist farmhouse. Mrs. Reist was happy in her daughter's joy and lived again in memory that hour when the same miracle had been wrought for her.

"Say," asked Philip, "I hope you two don't think you're springing a surprise? A person blind in one eye and not seeing out of the other could see which way the wind was blowing."

"Oh, Phil!" Amanda replied, but there was only love in her voice.

"It must be nice to be so happy like you are," said Millie.

"Yes, it must be," Uncle Amos nodded his head in affirmation. He looked at the hired girl, who did not appear to notice him. "I just wish I was twenty years younger," he added.

A week later Amanda and Martin were sitting in one of the big rooms of the Reist farmhouse. Through the open door came the sound of Millie and Mrs. Reist in conversation, with an occasional deeper note in Uncle Amos's slow, contented voice.

"Do you know," said Martin, "I was never much of a hand to remember poetry, but there's one verse I read at school that keeps coming to me since I know you are going to marry me. That verse about

'A perfect woman, n.o.bly planned To warn, to comfort, and command.'"

"Oh, no, Martin! You put me on a pedestal, and that's a tottering bit of architecture."

"Not on a pedestal," he contradicted, "but right by my side, walking together, that's the way we want to go."

"That's the only way. It's the way my parents went and the way yours are still going." She rose and brought to him a little book. "Read Riley's 'Song of the Road,'" she told him.

He opened the book and read the musical verses:

"'O I will walk with you, my lad, whichever way you fare, You'll have me, too, the side o' you, with heart as light as air.

No care for where the road you take's a-leadin'--anywhere,-- It can but be a joyful ja'nt the whilst _you_ journey there.

The road you take's the path o' love, an' that's the bridth o' two-- An' I will walk with you, my lad--O I will walk with you.'

"Why," he exclaimed, "that's beautiful! Riley knew how to put into words the things we all feel but can't express. Let's read the rest."

Her voice blended with his and out in the adjoining room Millie heard and listened. Silently the hired girl walked to the open door. She watched the two heads bending over the little book. Her heart ached for the happy childhood and the romance she had missed. The closing words of the poem came distinctly to her;

"'Sure, I will walk with you, my lad, As love ordains me to,-- To Heaven's door, and through, my lad, O I will walk with you.'"

"Say," she startled the lovers by her remark, "if that ain't the prettiest piece I ever heard!"

"Think so?" said Martin kindly. "I agree with you."

"Yes, it sounds nice but the meanin' is what abody likes."

The hired girl went back to her place in the other room. But Amanda turned to the man beside her and said, "Romance in the heart of Millie!

Who would guess it?"

"There's romance everywhere," Martin told her. "Millie's heart wouldn't be the fine big thing it is if she didn't keep a s.p.a.ce there for love and romance."

CHAPTER XXV

THE HEART OF MILLIE

The Reist farmhouse, always a busy place, was soon rivaling the proverbial beehive. Mrs. Reist, to whom sentiment was ever a vital, holy thing, to be treasured and clung to throughout the years, had long ago, in Amanda's childhood, begun the preparation for the time of the girl's marriage. After the fashion of olden times the mother had begun the filling of a Hope Chest for her girl. Just as she instilled into the youthful mind the homely old-fashioned virtues of honesty, truthfulness and reverence for holy things which made Amanda, as she stood on the threshold of a new life, so richly dowered in spiritual and moral acquisitions, so had the mother laid away in the big wooden chest fine linens, useful and beautiful and symbolic of the worth of the bride whose home they were destined to enrich.

But in addition to the precious contents of the Hope Chest many things were needed for the dowry of the daughter of a prosperous Lancaster County family. So the evenings and Sat.u.r.days of that year became busy ones for Amanda. Millie helped with much of the plainer sewing and Mrs.

Reist's exquisite tiny st.i.tches enhanced many of the garments.

"Poor Aunt Rebecca," Amanda said one day, "how we miss her now!"

"Yes, ain't?" agreed Millie. "For all her scoldin' she was a good help still. If she was livin' yet she'd fuss about all the sewin' you're doin' to get married but she'd pitch right in and help do it."

Philip offered to pull basting threads, but his generosity was not appreciated. "Go on," Millie told him, "you'd be more bother than you're worth! Next you'd be pullin' out the sewin'!" He was frequently chased from the room because of his inappropriate remarks concerning the trousseau or his declaration that Amanda was spending all the family wealth by her reckless subst.i.tution of silk for muslin.

"You keep quiet," Millie often reproved him. "I guess Amanda dare have what she wants if your mom says so. If she wants them things she calls cammysoles made out of silk let her have 'em. She's gettin' married only once."