“Oh, Sally!” David stopped abruptly and held her close to him, pityingly. “You look the adorable baby that you are! I pray to God that marrying me won’t make you old before your time! Why, honey-child, you haven’t had any girlhood at all, or childhood either! You should have dozens of sweethearts before you marry—go to theaters and parties and dances for years and years yet, before you settle down.” “Then I shan’t settle down,” Sally laughed shakily. “I’ll be a giddy flapper, if you’d rather! Ah, no, David! I want to be a good wife to you! But we won’t get old and serious. We’ll work together and play together and study together and hobo all over the country together when we feel like it. I think we make good hoboes, don’t you?” “Not at this rate,” David laughed, relieved. “I’m not going to kiss you a single other time before dawn, or we’ll never get anywhere. And don’t you try to vamp me, you little witch!” He did not quite keep his promise, for when Sally became so tired about four o’clock in the morning that she could walk no further, he picked her up in his big-muscled young arms, and strode proudly into the dawn with her, and of course the best antidote for fatigue and sleepiness was an occasional kiss on her drooping eyelids or upon her babyishly lax, pink little mouth. When the sun came up they were a little shy with each other, inclined to talk rapidly about trivial things. “Canfield—two miles,” David read from a sign post at a cross-roads. “I’m going to ask that truck driver the name of the nearest county seat, and how to get there.” Sally watched him proudly as he ran swiftly, apparently not at all fatigued after seven hours of hiking, to hail a dairy truck approaching along the state highway. The sun was in his tousled chestnut hair, turning it into gold, and the bigness and splendid beauty of his body thrilled her to sudden tears of joy that he was hers—hers. Her heart offered up a prayer: “Please God, don’t let anything happen so that we can’t be married today! Please!” “Canfield is a county seat,” David shouted exultantly before his long strides had brought him back to Sally. “The driver of the milk truck guessed why I wanted to know,” he added in a lower voice, as he came abreast of her and took her hands to swing them triumphantly. “He says we crossed the state line about ten miles back and that the marriage laws are very easy on elopers here. In some states you have to establish a legal residence before you can be married, but there’ll be no trouble like that here. Elopers from two or three bordering states come here to get married, he says. We’re in luck, sweetheart.” “You didn’t tell him our names?” Sally asked anxiously. “Mrs. Stone will have sent out a warning—”