"Well, and company," she reminded him, "that's what I want. The girls in to tea in our own house." "Yes," he assented. "Right away?" he wanted to know. "No," she said, "not right away, Silly! We've got to buy curtains and things. I never thought I'd have so many presents," she went on happily. "They's two water pitchers alike. Bess says I can change hers. We'll take it to the City"--she gave a little bounce on the skirt box--"and see a show, a really, truly show." "Sure we will," said he, magnificently. "And I'll take you to the place I told you about--where I got picked up." The little bride nodded, her eyes softening almost maternally. It was as if that story were her own, the story of Allen, the little stray child picked up on the streets of the City by that good woman whom Chris had never seen. But the name of Sarah Ernestine was like a charm to Chris, for the woman had been to Allen father and mother both. Chris bent down swiftly to his hands, closed over her own, and kissed them. "Oh, Allen," she said, with a curious wistfulness, "will you _always_, always be just like you are now?" "Well, I should say I would," he answered gently. "They's nobody like you anywheres, Chris. Mis' Chris, Mis' Allen Martin." "Don't it scare you to say it?" she demanded. "Yes, sir, it does," he confessed. "It's like sayin' your own name over the telephone. What about you? Will _you_ always, too?" "Yes," she said, "always. Only--" "Only what?" he repeated anxiously. "Oh," she said, "don't let's let any outside things come between us, Allen--like they do, like with Bess and Opie,--business and sewin',--that's what I'm afraid of," she ended vaguely. "Well," he said, "I guess we ain't much afraid of each other, honey. I guess we're just afraid of what could come between us." A voice, unconvincing, unimportant, a part of the inessential aspect of alien things, detached itself from the accompaniment in the next room, saying something responsible and plaintive about only an hour till train time. "An hour," Allen said over, and put his arms about her, with boyish awkwardness for the sake of the crisp muslin gown that had so terrified him. She rose and stood beside him, and he waited for a moment looking up in her face. "Chris," he said, "I'm scared of this one hour even. Till train time." "I'll hurry up and get the hour done as quick as I can," she promised him gayly. "Honestly, now--" said Chris's mother from the vague and indeterminate region where she moved. "Right off, Mis' Mother!" Allen said, and knew that she was in the doorway, with the bridesmaids laughing beside her. And then he went down the stairway, his first radiant moment gone by.