“Sally!” David was on his feet now and his stern voice checked her before she had run a dozen steps away from him. “Come here!” She crept into his arms, and laid her head against his chest, so that his heart beat strongly and steadily just beneath her ear. “Listen, Sally, beloved,” he urged softly. “I want to marry you more than anything in the world. It might have been better if we had met and fallen in love when we were both older, but fate took care of that for us, and I’m only proud and happy to be able to ask you now to marry me. I’ll not make much money at first, maybe, but neither of us has been used to a great deal, and I promise you now that I’ll not fail you in love and loyalty. I’ve never cared for any other girl and I never will. Let’s not try to look too far ahead. We’re young and strong and in love. Isn’t that enough, sweet?” “Yes,” she agreed, nodding her head against his breast. “Then let’s travel,” he laughed jubilantly. “This is our wedding day, Sally! Think of it, sweet! Our wedding day!” As they plodded hand in hand through the long hours before dawn Sally thought of nothing else. She was glad that walking made talking a waste of energy, for she wanted to think and feel and search her heart and soul for treasure to lavish upon the boy-man she was to marry. Marriage! The word made her feel shivery and solemn and more than a little frightened, but when a shudder of fear made her hand twitch in David’s, the firm, warm pressure of his fingers reassured her. She resolutely forced her mind away from the mysteries that lay ahead of her, mysteries at which Mrs. Stone had hinted in that last, embarrassing lecture she had delivered to a cowering, shamefaced Sally the day Clem Carson had taken her to the farm. Whatever lay before her, David would be with her, gentle, sweet, infinitely tender— “I’ll be Mrs. David Nash,” she told herself childishly. “I’ll be David’s wife. I’ll have David for my family, and maybe—some day—there’ll be a baby David, with hair like gold in the sun—” “You’ll have to tell a fib about your age, honey,” David interrupted her thoughts, his voice grave and, it seemed to her, a little embarrassed. Maybe David, too, was frightened a bit, just as she was! That made it easier. She was suddenly jubilantly glad that he was not wise and sophisticated and very much older than she, like Arthur Van Horne, for instance. “I’ll have to say I’m eighteen, won’t I?” she laughed. “Do I look eighteen, David? Now that most girls have bobbed hair, my long hair, ought to make me look very old and dignified. I _do_ look eighteen, don’t I, David?”