For many days after their marriage Jud and Justine were obliged to endure coarse jokes, kindly meant if out of tune with their sensitive minds. Happy weeks sped by, weeks replete with the fullness of joy known only to the newly wedded. Days of toil, that had once been long and irksome, now were flitting seasons of anticipation between real joys. At dusk he came home with eyes glowing in the delight that knows no fatigue, with a heart leaping with the love that is young and eager, and blood carousing under the intoxication of passion's wine. In the kitchen door of the little cot, no longer dismal in its weather-worn plainness, there always stood the slim, supple girl, her heart leaping with the eagerness to be clasped in his arms. She was growing into perfect womanhood, perfect in figure, perfect in love, perfect in all its mysteries. Her whole life before now appeared as a dreamless sleep to her; the present was the beginning of a divine dream that softens the rest of life into mellow forgetfulness. She walked with him in the hayfield, from choice, delighted to toil near him, to breathe the same air, to endure the same sun, to enjoy the same moments of rest beneath the great oaks, to drink from the same brown jug of spring water, to sing, to laugh, to play with him. It was not work. Then came the harvesting, the thrashing, and the fall sowing. Six months were soon gone and still these children played like cupids. Other married people in the neighborhood, whose honeymoons had not been more than a week old before they began to show callous spots, wondered dumbly at the beautiful girl who grew prettier and straighter instead of turning sour, frowsy, and bent under the rigors of connubial joy--as they had found it. They could not understand how the husband could be so blithe and cheery, so upstanding and strong, and so devoted. The wives of the neighborhood pondered over the latter condition. The husbands did not deem it worth while or expedient to wonder--they merely called Jud a "dinged shif'less boy that'll wake up some time er 'nother an' understan' more 'n he does now." Yet they had to admit that Jud was conducting the little farm faultlessly, even though he did find time to moon with his wife, to bask in the sunshine of her love, to wander over wood and field with her beside him, sketching, sketching, eternally sketching.