"Then I suppose you won't be wanting me on the premises," said Peggy, making a dive for the door.

"I would be delighted if there was a whole procession of you, like a frieze," said Francis, "walking by and seeing how happy I am."

"Oh, but I wouldn't!" protested Marjorie. "Do let me get up and be respectable, Francis. There _will_ be a procession going by presently--you know the men all come and ask how I am every day."

At that reluctantly he did put her back in her chair, where she lay for a little longer, starry-eyed and quite unlike an invalid. Peggy went inside, judging that in spite of Francis's protests they would be perfectly happy alone; and, besides, she wanted to tell her mother.

The two on the veranda stayed where they were.

"But what about the cooking?" demanded Marjorie presently.

"It's been all right while you were sick. We are going to get through sooner than I thought."

"Oh, I'm so glad," she sighed. "I really did want you to get the work done, and succeed--I never hated you that much, at the worst."

"Don't talk about the work!" he said pa.s.sionately. "The work didn't matter a bit. And I tell you this, Marjorie, if I can help it you shall never do another stroke of work as long as you live!"

"That's going too far, as usual," said Marjorie calmly. "You certainly are a tempestuous person, Francis Ellison! I'd be unhappy without something to do. . . . May I play on the banjo sometimes in the evening, and will you stay quite close to me when I do?"

"You mean----" he asked.

"I mean that you didn't destroy all those notes when you lost your temper with me. To begin with, you left note-shaped places in the dust, on all the things you had put there for me--you really will have to let me do a little dusting occasionally, dear!--and so I hunted.

One note was under the fresh banjo strings. . . . And you may well be glad you forgot it."

"Why, dearest? Did it make you a little sorry for me?"

"Oh, so sorry! In spite of all you'd said and done, somehow--somehow when I read that I think I began to fall in love with you all over again. . . . I cried, I know. I didn't know then that was what was the matter with me, but I know now it was. You had wanted me so much, there in our dear little cabin; and try as I would to keep telling myself that it was a last year's you, it kept feeling like a this year's."

"It was," he said fervently. "It was this year's, and every year's, as long as we both live."

"As long as we both live," echoed Marjorie.

They were both quiet for a while. The sun was setting, and the rays shone down through the trees; through a gap they could see the west, scarlet and gold and beautiful. Things felt very solemn. Marjorie put out one hand mutely, and Francis took it and held it closely. It was more really their marriage day than the one in New York, when they were both young and reckless, and scarcely more than bits of flotsam in the tremendous world-current that set toward mating and replacement. They belonged together now, willingly and deliberately; set to go forward with what love and forbearance and earnestness of purpose they could, all the days of their life. They both felt it, and were still.

But presently Marjorie's laughter awakened Francis from his muse. He had been promising himself that he would make up to her--that he would try to erase all his wild doings from her mind. She should forget some day that he had ever put her in an automobile, and borne her away, Sabine fashion, to where he could dominate her into submission and wifehood. He had gone very far into himself, and that light laugh of hers, that he loved, drew him back from the far places.

"What is it, dear?" he asked.

"I was just thinking--I was just thinking what awfully good common sense you showed, carrying me off that way. And how proud of it I'll be as long as I live!" said Marjorie.